Alternate Realities: Vision of the Other Side
by Ehren Hatten
Summary: Robin is dead. He keeps finding himself, however, strangely drawn to a French girl named Jeanne and her struggle to fight for France. But that is only the beginning of it all. Chap 8 up.
1. Prologue

_**A/N: and because I absolutely adore this pair for no other reason than they simply rock… Jeanne/Depp!Robin it is!! XD**_

_**And in case you're curious why I call him Depp!Robin, which would be those who don't know about my comic Silver Glass Hound (mildly fanfiction since it borrows the appearances of Jeanne from the game and Lancer from Fate/Stay Night), when I was designing Robin Hood I drew a quick picture of my ideal image of Robin. I wasn't going for any specific persona of Robin, like Kevin Costner or blah dee blah blah, I was just going for a Robin that looked very Robinish. So when I drew him he ended up looking almost exactly as though Johnny Depp put in bright emerald green contact lenses and paled himself up a little before putting on dirty, torn clothes and a scarf and hat. XD Seriously, it wasn't my intention to make him look like that, but that's what happened. So now everyone who's read my comic calls him Depp!Robin.**_

_Alternate Realities:_

**Vision of the Other Side**

_Prologue_

Robin coughed horribly into his gloved hand as he pulled his sword from his scabbard. He could hear the sheriff's men coming in from outside, not even bothering to tether their horses in their haste to come and retrieve him. Will was off to the side and looked at him warily. "This looks pretty bleak doesn't it, Robin," said Will softly. He gave a strained grin in a poor attempt at keeping his good humor up, though right now Robin would have preferred a different time for it.

They could hear the prioress talking to the men downstairs as though she cared not that Robin and his half-brother Will Scarlett could hear her. "Yes, the brigand is upstairs. Go and retrieve him if you wish. I'll not stop you. I'll not keep thieves and murderers in this house of God."

"Good to hear it, ma'am," said the leader. It seemed that the Sheriff had replaced his lead man Guy with someone else. After all, Robin had gutted the bastard not that long ago. "The money for this priory will come soon enough from my lord the Sheriff for this."

"I should hope so," said the prioress stiffly, "We work hard for His will and one would hope a good Christian like the Sheriff would recognize our efforts."

"Oh, he does, ma'am. He does."

Then, the footsteps came. Will and Robin could hear them loud and clear like the magnified beat of a heart. Or was that Robin's? Robin looked Will squarely in the face. Will recognized that look and grew cold inside as he was fixed to the spot by those bright emerald eyes piercing him to the core. "Robin… what are you thinking?" asked Will in a scared voice.

"If this sickness doesn't kill me soon enough, then kill me yourself. I don't want those men to use me to parade around to everyone else," said Robin, hacking harder than ever. Blood dribbled out of his mouth as he struggled to breathe. "The sheriff will use me to demoralize everyone. Before they get up here, kill me and get out of here with my body or hide as quickly as you can. Bury me…"

Robin picked up his bow and an arrow from his usually ever present quiver and had to lean on the wall to steady himself to be able to aim properly. "Bury me wherever this arrow lands, Will." Then, he shot the arrow off. Will watched as it arced in the air and disappeared and then looked at Robin as he coughed harder than ever before. He was pale, paler than he had ever seen him.

"Promise me, Will!" said Robin harshly.

"I promise."

"Damn it, woman, which room are they in!?" cried out one of the sheriff's men.

"Follow me!" said the now very irritated Prioress.

Will turned to look to the door and the amount of things they put in front of it to brace against people coming in. It would only hold the sheriff's men for a little while, but it might provide him and Robin enough time to escape if he could get a hold of the man long enough to do so. When he turned to look to his half-brother he saw Robin sliding down the wall, looking up at the moon through the window. Will hurried over to Robin's side and hefted him up as well as he could. "Robin, come on."

Robin couldn't say much. His head rolled backward as his eyes rolled into the back of his head. It was yet another of his fainting spells from the fever that racked his body. Will had seen more than his fair share of it for too long. Will looked out the window to see the drop from it. It was only a two story building, but it was a very long building with a stable right under their window. Will had been wondering what that smell had been for the longest time and now he knew. He would've laughed if he wasn't under the severe pressure of getting his stupid brother out of the damned hell house of nuns. He couldn't risk going out the front door so out the window it was.

The sheriff's men banged and rammed into the door as hard as they could. Will had been right in putting as much as he could find in the room in front of that door, though it was a good, sturdy oak door. With the loud banging giving him a cover sound for his fall, he clambered out the window and let himself and Robin drop down from the ledge and through the roof of the stable. Will thanked God for the relatively soft landing he had managed to get after hitting the roof of the stable. Had he wound up hitting a horse or horse dung, he might have thought Robin's lack of luck now was affecting him.

Will rolled out of the hay stack he'd landed in and pulled Robin up as fast as he could before staggering out. Well, he had managed to hurt his leg, but he wasn't about to stop moving. He could hear the door give way with a loud crack as it was pushed off its hinges and onto the floor. He heard the sheriff's men cry out in outrage as he limped off into the dense forest that served as the border of the priory's land. Will prayed hard as he made his way through trees and underbrush. He prayed that he and Robin would find a safe haven quickly away from the hand of the Sheriff of Nottingham.

It was then that he saw the arrow in the ground with the distinctive feathers that Robin preferred above chicken feathers that the rest of the outlaw band used. He stopped and stared at it as though it was his answer from God… or Satan. Will wasn't sure which sometimes and right then it was doubly hard to tell the difference. Robin had done his best to do as much good as he could for so long, but in the end Robin and Will and John and Much and all the others were thieves and murderers as much as the sheriff and his men. God didn't let in thieves and murderers into His Kingdom.

He laid Robin down carefully and took a quick look around for things to hide their presence with. He could faintly hear the cries of the sheriff's men and their horses' hooves getting closer. He managed to use a rock to dig out a hole in the ground for the two of them, though it was a bit shallower than he would have liked and pulled his brother close to him into the hole before pulling the cover over them. The horse hooves moved much closer now and Will could smell them easily in the clear air of the night.

"Keep your eyes open, men! Comb this forest for their rotten carcasses!" shouted the leader. "We're not leaving until we find them!"

Will wasn't certain how long he laid there, but it felt like forever. His arms and legs hurt from holding his position under their cover for so long and fair screamed to be released from the cramped space. The horse hooves moved around him and around the brush nearest to him, but, thankfully, none actually touched him. He didn't think he could handle more of the throbbing pain in his leg if a horse actually stepped on him. Soon, the horses moved away deeper into the forest and then disappeared altogether. Will didn't chance getting out from under the cover just yet, but he did move his injured leg a little to see what he had managed to do to it. A thick piece of wood from the splintered rafters in the stable had penetrated the outside of his thigh and jutted out sickly as it was covered in his blood now.

Will pulled up a thick stick and put it in his mouth to bite down on before he reached down and pulled the wood out from his thigh. Then, he grabbed his scarf, which had at one time been a brilliant red and made of silk, and wrapped it around his leg and the wound. It had been a bit of a joke that Will had learned his style of dress from the sometimes enigmatic Robin, but, in truth, Will just preferred fine cloth to wool and had since he was a child. It was because he could hardly get anything but harsh clothing from his secondary status in his and Robin's father's eyes.

Will then looked to Robin and found the man still breathing, though harshly. He sighed and leaned back into the cramped little hole he had managed to make and prayed once more to God. "Please, God, keep us safe from those men. Keep us safe until the others can find us," he muttered in a soft voice, "I know we aren't the best of men, that we're thieves and murderers, but if it's just this one time I beg you to keep us safe from those men until our own men can find us."

Sleep seemed imminent. Will couldn't keep his eyes open much longer after he prayed and soon found himself embraced by it. He didn't dream that night. He simply fell asleep and hoped as he did so that his prayers would be listened to.

* * *

"Oi."

Will groaned as he looked up at the blurry face of someone talking to him. It was the old friar and the young Much the Miller's Son. Much was much younger than Will; in fact he had been a boy when Will had finally acknowledged his half brother as the leader of their crazy band of outlaws. Much prodded Friar Tuck in his fat shoulder before pointing to Will's leg. "Looks like the bleeding's stopping, Tuck."

"Oh, good work, Much," said Friar Tuck, grinning a somewhat toothless smile.

Much grinned and then looked to Will carefully. "Oi, Will. You awake?"

Will snorted and looked around. "Where's… Where's Robin?"

For a moment there was silence, then Tuck spoke softly, "He's dead. He was dead when we found you both under this thing."

"How… did you find me?" asked Will as he attempted to sit up. He immediately regretted it and laid back down as his vision swam. "Urgh."

"Don't sit up. You've lost a lot of blood, Will. You're lucky the sheriff's men didn't have their dogs with them or they would have scented you out immediately," said Much.

Will smiled wryly before looking to the placid, pale face of his half brother Robin. He reached out and pulled the broad brimmed hat down further over Robin's eyes as he tended to do when he was trying to sleep. "Where's the arrow?"

"The arrow?" asked Much.

"Over here, Will," said Friar Tuck. "Is there some reason we need to know where it is?"

"Yeah, there is. The fucking bastard told me to either kill him myself or let him die by the fever and then bury him wherever the arrow landed. I wasn't about to wait for those men to get us so I grabbed him and jumped onto the roof of the stables before getting out here. I was surprised I'd managed to find his stupid arrow." Will put his hand up to his face and rubbed his scratchy eyes. When had he grown up to be so old? It almost seemed as though it hadn't been that long ago that he was just some stupid kid trying to get a little of his own back on Robin's tanned hide.

He glanced back to the now too pale dead figure of his brother and saw the old age creeping into his features. Even in his old age Robin was far more attractive than most young men. It was somewhat freakish to most of the younger men in the band of outlaws that Robin seemed to still be able to charm his way into a young woman's heart than any of them with just a smile and kiss on the hand. His once black hair was sprinkled with white and gray and the lines in his face were light compared to other men his age. It was as though age simply didn't want to touch him. Will, however, had received his mother's appearance more than his father's, like Robin had.

Friar Tuck nodded and bowed his head as he fiddled about his person for his little bible. "I'll consecrate the ground so that we may bury him properly. He deserves that much from us."

And so it was. Much dug out the hole for Robin as Will watched Tuck in silence as the man went about consecrating the grounds. When they were done, Will managed to get up for just long enough to help pull his brother's body to the hole and drop him in. Tuck's voice chimed in as he made the sign of the cross over Robin's body and went to help shovel the dirt back onto him. "From dust we came, so shall we return. Good bye, old friend. May God have mercy on your soul when you meet him, though I don't doubt you've already managed to win your way in past saint peter's gates!"

There they put rocks as a grave marker as well as stuck the arrow back into the ground. Will used his one good knife to carve into a stone a rather light "RH" before they left the land to the forces of nature. This was the end of an era for them. This was the end of Robin Hood. Now, it was up to them to continue his work or attempt to go back to normal lives as Robin had tried to do once before, but of course Robin's face was too well known to the Sheriff and his name too well known to the Sheriff's men to allow him the peace he had tried to seek.

And so, William Scarlett, Much, and Tuck made their way back to the encampment in Sherwood to do as they had always done: be the thieves and murderers they had become accustomed to.


	2. Chapter One

_**A/N: for those on , I have no idea exactly where to put this since it's got a little of a lot of other stories and whatnot so I put it in the Robin Hood category. I suppose I could put it in the Jeanne game category, but it doesn't have enough of that to do much with it. And yeah, I like shoving together various, different stories for my own amusement. It's fun. :D**_

_Chapter One_

Robin expected many things of heaven, but what he had not expected to see was a world like the one he left. Not with humans being horrible to one another and the daily grind of life, but the world itself was like Earth. In fact, if one chose it the world could change to be the place you loved the most or the one you were last laid to rest. But the colors and the smells, the sensations, all of it was intense and pure; it was as though Earth was simply an old artist's rendering of the real thing.

That is, he found heaven after he managed to get past the two strange figures sorting people out. One was a tall, faceless male figure with a gray cloak with its hood drawn up to hide his face. The other was a slightly shorter male figure, also faceless, but for some reason neither one made him afraid of them. The gray cloaked figure seemed to automatically pick off people and nudge them one direction or another. Every so often, Robin had seen a couple of people be shoved off and they would disappear through a door that read "Earth" on a sign over it.

On one side he saw a brilliantly lit place with bright fires in hues of orange and yellow and red. But for all of its brilliant light it was as cold as the coldest winter. There stood a man taking in small numbers of people, though Robin wasn't entirely certain he could really be called a man. He was tall with a human man's body, arms and legs entirely human, but his face was unearthly beautiful and his eyes were red like a demon's. His long, shiny black hair ran down his back over a pair of black feathered wings and two long bull horns protruded from his head.

On the other side of the rather blank "sorting" room was a brilliantly lit place that was as warm as the warmest, most loving embrace. This doorway was as wide as the "hell" doorway, but no one was standing and ushering in people, though a lot of men, women and children made their way toward the bright, warm door. That was how he had found himself inside Heaven. The gray cloaked figure looked over him and had nodded toward him and then nudged him to the Heaven door as though he had somehow managed to say "All right, in you go. NEXT!"

Once in Heaven, Robin had found himself wandering around aimlessly as people chatted with others and some few people glowed brightly with a strange, ethereal radiance that he was almost blinded by. These people he guessed were probably saints or something, so he meandered away from them to find himself a nice place to sit and rest a while before looking for something to do. It was so timeless in that place that Robin wondered just exactly how long he had been wandering about in it when he saw a bright figure, brighter than anything else, standing off and watching everyone. For some reason he couldn't see his face, or maybe he wasn't meant to see it, but the figure was dressed in rather fine clothes. Was this God? Or perhaps he was Jesus, but if it was Jesus, why was he dressed in modern clothes?

The tall, brilliantly lit figure walked toward Robin and put his hands in his belt. It seemed to Robin that the man had a broad grin across his face though he couldn't focus on his face well enough to see anything. "Hello?" asked Robin, raising a dark eyebrow toward the man as he crossed his arms in front of his chest and stroked the black goatee he had always sported.

"Greetings, Robert," said the figure in good spirits, "You look very well. I'm glad you had come out the way you had!"

"Pardon?"

"Oh! Sorry, I always forget to introduce myself," said the figure and took on a slightly more solemn stance, "I am God… The God of the Jews, the Father of all creation and all that." Robin was perplexed by this God figure. Wasn't God supposed to be a man with a long white beard and hair or something?

"You're God?" asked Robin incredulously.

The figure leaned closer and once more Robin found it even harder to focus on his seemingly endlessly changing face. "Do you doubt me even though I stand here before you?"

Robin snorted and eyed the man warily, clearly unconvinced. God seemed to grin once more and moved away from Robin. "I would doubt that the pope's underwear was white unless I checked it for myself."

God's grin became a mischievous smirk, though, as usual, Robin couldn't actually see it so much as he could sense it before the man chuckled and put his hands back into his belt as he had when he had walked up to Robin. "Trust is a virtue… so is faith," said God and shook his head. "I have no doubt that you'll find I speak the truth, Robert. Don't let my good humor fool you. I am every bit the God you know, although the Catholic church has distorted my image as well as that of my Son." Then, he offered a hand to Robin and said, "Come, walk with me."

Robin, not one to really argue with God, did as he was bade and walked beside the strange, faceless man as they walked by small groups of people talking, eating, resting or just enjoying themselves. The landscape kept changing to that of place Robin had seen or heard of, but before them was the land he prized the most. Tall, green trees surrounded him and God as though they had always been there. Suddenly it seemed as though no one was around at all except the morning mist rolling in.

"Why am I here?" asked Robin after a while as he looked up at the trees.

"Because you were meant to be," said God. "Very few warrant the other place, believe me. My children are my children no matter what they do, but sometimes I have to give them over to Lucifer to take care of so they might learn a very valuable lesson. It pains me to do so, but it must be done." He spoke without his good humor now. His voice was, instead, incredibly sad. "What's worse are those that harm my chosen children."

"The Jews?" asked Robin.

"Yes," said God with what seemed to be a faint smile. "They have suffered much over the years and will suffer still long after this era. It is the way of humans to hate that which is different from them. The Hebrew people are no different."

"Then, why make us to be that way?" asked Robin. He felt younger than he had in a long time. He felt like he was a child in this man's presence and that both intrigued him and revolted him.

"Free will," said God as he stopped walking and his head moved toward the canopy of the trees above them. "I gave humans free will. You are free to do and say as you please because I gave you that right."

"Then, it's our fault that all the bad things happen in the world?" asked Robin.

"Yes," said God. He lifted his hands out on either side of him and pointed his palms upward as he spun around in a circle. "Isn't it marvelous? The things you loved, Robert, are absolutely wonderful!"

Robin wondered, briefly, if perhaps he were speaking with a madman. He sighed and nodded before looking up at the sky through the leaves of the tall trees. "Yes, it is a wonderful place. This is Sherwood Forest. Just beyond that tree there should be where my encampment lies."

"Mmm, yes, I'm sure you'll find a few of your mates there soon enough," said God, having stopped spinning around. He turned toward Robin and held his arms wide toward Robin as though he was going to embrace him. "And you are most welcome inside this holy land."

Robin watched silently as the man known as God dropped his arms to his sides and walked backwards away from him before disappearing entirely into the morning mist. Robin wondered if he should go looking for the friends that had died or stay in this one spot and rest a while before deciding on the latter and hopping up into the branches of one big tree and laying down like a big cat. He pulled the brim of his hat down over his eyes and then nestled himself into the crook of the tree branch before he allowed himself to sleep.

* * *

Something pricked Robin out of his restful sleep. He wasn't certain what, but it felt like hundreds of souls were coming in, far more than normal. Time had no meaning in Heaven so Robin wasn't certain how long he had been in it. He had seen that most people went to yet another faceless figure and were reincarnated in human bodies, but a few stayed behind to watch over the world. Robin, on the other hand, simply just didn't care about dealing others anymore. He had seen the worst the world could give a person and lived the worst a man could live, but he had also loved as much as he could love and felt very irritated in the people who had shunned him when they ought to have offered him a hand simply because of his reputation. So, Robin didn't join the others to be reborn nor did he watch over the world like everyone else that stayed behind. Instead, he holed himself up inside his haven of greenery and slept dreamlessly.

Robin had no idea how long he had been in Heaven, but he was certain he had been in it a while when he had been woken up by the influx of people. And those people looked very French and very English to him. Overtaken by curiousity, he made his way out of his wooded haven and found himself watching as some of his mates and even his half brother William Scarlett walked over to the growing crowd to watch the newcomers.

Will looked like when Robin had first seen him. He was a young man with dark blonde hair that was wavy and shined in the light of Heaven with a strange glow. His face, though young, was joyful as he spied Robin, his blue eyes lighting up in good cheer. "Robin!" he cried out and waved to him. "You came out of your squirrel hole?"

Robin smirked faintly and shook his head. "I felt the people coming in."

Will's face became suddenly very solemn and rather angry as he looked to the crowd coming in. "Our countrymen and France are getting into a war. It's been going on for a while, though I'm not certain how long."

This hardly surprised Robin, though it surprised him that his fellow countrymen would go after France in particular. "That's not too unusual, Will," said Robin as he watched a few women and children walk in with the large number of men. "Humans are very violent people, after all."

"Aye, but this is fucking stupid," said Will. Robin snorted and hid his smile behind the long, dirty, grayish green scarf he wore around his neck before looking over to the crowd of people coming in.

"You kiss your mother with that mouth?" asked John as he made his way over. Little John, despite his name, was hardly little, but he was a gentle hearted man with dark hair and dark eyes. He had not been very receptive to Robin when Robin had first found John and the outlaws in Sherwood, but he had managed to make his case to John after a while.

Will laughed. "I'll kiss your sister with it readily!"

"You leave me sister out of this," countered John, grinning a bit at the boy. It was as though they had never died.

A chubby young man made his way over, wearing a friar's clothing, though he was didn't quite resemble the man Robin had known. He grinned slightly as he saw Tuck move closer to them. "This is the Kingdom of God, Will. One would hope that you would keep a better tongue in your head here."

"God took me in anyway," grinned Will.

Tuck grinned after a moment before he spied Robin and stopped. "Bless my soul! Robin! There you are, you old fox!"

"You expected less of me, Tuck?" asked Robin, though he didn't sound nearly as jovial as once he might have. It forced Tuck to regard him carefully before Robin nodded toward Tuck. "I am fine, friar."

Tuck smiled and looked to the souls coming in, found himself leered at by the Frenchmen walking by. Tuck was accustomed to people throwing him angry looks and fixed them with a stern look. "If you have something rude to say to me then out with it. Nothing you can say to me now can be any worse than what I have endured in life, though I will warn you that you are in Heaven and not on Earth and this land is as much God's land as I am a man of God."

"_Mange du merde et meurt_!" spat one Frenchman.

"_Va te faire mettre_!" shouted another, spitting at Tuck. John grabbed a hold of Will's arms and held him still as he was about to jump at the men shouting and spitting at Tuck. Tuck, meanwhile, stood still and simply gazed at the men with a determined glare.

"Are you quite through?" he said finally. When the men said nothing he smiled and bowed his head, "Good, then you can be off now to enjoy the after life. I'm sure you men are good men, despite you spitting and shouting obscenities at an old friar such as myself." The men seemed perplexed by Tuck's behavior before one of them prodded the others in their sides and nudged them onward, a solemn look on his young face.

"Go. This is a peaceful place," said the man. "There is no war here. Not anymore. Come on." His voice was heavy with a French accent, though he spoke perfectly fine English. With that, the men followed their fellow away, one of them bowing to Tuck in respect before catching up with the Frenchmen.

Will relaxed finally and moved toward Tuck before looking after the Frenchmen. "I can't believe them!"

"It is the way of all men and women, Will," said Tuck softly, "It is simply the way we are. They will soon realize where they are and move on beyond their hate. In the mean time, allow them their peace."

Robin moved away from his merry band and went searching for more information as to what was happening down on Earth. His goal, however, as usual, was hard to find. God seemed to find ways of making it absolutely impossible to find and so Robin was left to go find the only other being left. He found the gray cloaked figure through the doorway and walked right toward him. However, he was suddenly shoved back by a force that he couldn't see, but felt like he had run right into a wall.

"Oi," called Robin to the faceless figure. "OI! I know you can hear me!"

The faceless figures turned toward him, though the other looked way and continued to usher people through the two doorways and shoving them out the Earth doorway when they seemed to not belong there. The gray cloaked figure, however, continued to look at him, though he had no eyes to see him with. "I hear you," said the figure, though he had no mouth to speak with.

"Why can't I get through?" asked Robin.

"Because you are walking through the wrong door. The reincarnated go through another," said the gray clad figure.

"I don't want to be reincarnated!" said Robin. "Why can't I just go looking around? I want to see what is happening!"

"You are at the wrong door. The world mirrors are over that way." Then, the gray clad figure lifted a hand and pointed behind Robin to an area he had not noticed before. There Robin saw a bunch of portals that were silvery like mirrors but were the clearest he had ever seen in his life and afterlife.

"I don't want to watch from afar," said Robin, getting irritated. His voice dropped low into a sort of growl when he grew angry. "I want to see it for myself."

"Then, be reincarnated. That is the way of things," said the gray clad figure. Then, Robin was thrust away from the door with so much force that he found himself landing right in front of a very large, clear mirror suspended in the air. So much for getting out for a while to see things! Robin had heard of one spirit getting so restless that the other spirits petitioned for him to be able to get out whenever he wished so he might amuse himself outside of Heaven and give everyone a bit of peace. A plot formed in Robin's head as he looked into the mirror. He saw the devastation of war upon the French land. He saw the bodies of the dead riddling it and staining it with blood. He would get the same privileges. He would make certain of it!


	3. Chapter Two

_**A/N: lalalala so ya'll enjoying this? I'm busy waiting for my grandma to call so I can pick her up from the hospital. She said the doctor wanted to wait till the last possible minute to get the staples out of her before she goes home. **_

_**And Chewy is wandering around under my bed for some reason. Not entirely certain what he's doing down there, but I'm sure it's something to do with picking at the underside of my box spring. =w=;;**_

_**Ah, my grandma just called. I'm going to write a bit before I get going. :3 Also, I am updating this today because I finished writing this when it was 7am and I was about half dead. It seems I did a fair job of doing what I wanted, even when I wasn't wholly aware of it. XD**_

_Chapter Two_

One could argue that generally speaking Robin was rather apathetic toward most things, especially as he grew older. He simply did not care to deal with others as he once did. However, there were times when his curiosity was so fired up that he simply could not let things be. Those times were the worst for those attempting to keep order because when these instances occurred, chaos usually ensued.

This was one such occasion.

It occurred to Robin that he had spent entirely too much time being lazy and apathetic toward the outside world. He had simply hopped up onto a tree branch and went unconscious to everything and everyone until the day that the war started between France and England. It so riled him that the two countries which had been allies beforehand were now absolute enemies that he had to know what else he had missed. It was a compulsion that he simply could not ignore. How did his country fair? How do the people he had once cared for fair? Did people remember him at all?

The latter he snorted at as he checked the quiver he usually kept with him and checked the arrows. That was another odd thing about this Heaven. He could conjure up his old weapons should he choose to as if by magic or as if they were bound to him. He strung up his bow and checked the tension, smiling in a very satisfied way at the twang he got from the string when he pulled it. He checked his knife and his sword and eyed the longer blade for a moment. He would leave it be since he did not intend for it to be used, but kept the knife on hand in case he did need that.

The people remember him? That was a laugh! The people hardly cared about what he did for them and only the ones truly abused by the Sheriff ever thanked Robin for what he gave back to them. He was a thief and murderer and that was all he ever would be to them. What would have changed so much after his death? With those weapons on him, he started off out of the wood he prized and stopped. He had to want to be near his target to speak with them, so he closed his eyes and thought hard on it.

The surroundings came in a blur, though they were not wholly different from Robin's dark, misty wood. The area he opened his eyes to was green, greener than it should have been, and there were woods about, but most importantly there were houses and people talking. Men, women and children milled about as they once had on Earth, as though they had not actually died at all. And those toward the wooded area? He smirked at himself and walked through the small village of people. A woman eyed him for a moment and smiled. She seemed to Robin as though she should be far older than she appeared to him as, but to him she looked to be about thirty. "Good day, _monsieur_."

Robin smirked faintly. This must be the French part of Heaven, since he could now hear everyone around him speaking the language. Some spoke an older form, but they could no less be understood. "Shouldn't you be going to the line of people being—what's it called—reincarnated?"

"_Oui_, but not yet. I want to enjoy this peace for now. I will go back in time as I have so many times before," said the woman gently. "You look like a right handsome devil of a hunter. I doubt you need those arrows. You could simply smile and make a doe bow to your charm." Then, she laughed gently toward him as he would expect an old grandmother to do toward a child.

Robin grinned slightly behind the cover of the scarf wound around his neck. "I used to get that a lot when I was a young man."

"Here we are always young, though we are old inside. You, however, are not that old, but young compared to the souls around you. It's as though you were made specifically to be just as you are," said the woman. She tilted her head slightly as she spoke to him and narrowed her eyes as she inspected him for a time and touched the brim of his hat. "Yes, indeed, you are meant only to be you."

"God said something close to that when I saw him," said Robin softly.

"Indeed? It is not surprising. He is everywhere." He saw her eyes flick away from him before returning to look more seriously at him. "I would be wary, sir. I don't doubt there are many men here who would not take kindly toward an Englishman, be he of Norman blood or nay, being in this haven for us French."

Robin once more smirked rather devilishly. "Then, I've got my arrows and my bow should I need to protect myself. Good day, _mademoiselle_." Then, he took off his hat and bowed toward her in a sweeping display. The woman smiled at him and nodded him onward as she flicked her eyes toward the men glaring at his back. Yes, he knew they were there and that they probably felt ready to punch him on the nose, but he wasn't going to start up with them. He left the village in short order and meandered toward the trees that surrounded it, smiling at them. There, sitting around a fire, were a bunch of men singing and laughing with one another as they might have done on a cold night on the battle field.

Robin snuck around the small camp and hid behind a tree as he pulled his bow off his shoulder and took quick glances to make sure of his available targets. There were six of them sitting around the fire and all of them drinking and laughing as they told stories. Robin could understand the things they said, since he had learned French as a boy. French, when he was growing up, was a common language to learn, for it was often spoken in the royal circles, but he had mostly learned Norman French, which was a bit bastardized to be sure.

"And then she looked up and said 'what was that for? I did it just like you told me to' and I said 'I didn't ask you to nearly take it off!'" said one man as he laughed heartily.

"Come on, she couldn't have been _that_ bad," said another.

"_Yes_, she was bad as bad can be had—" The man talking fell suddenly very silent as his mug was broken by an arrow shooting straight through it. He blinked at the mug ring still left in his hand perplexed, as though not certain why his mug seemingly exploded in his hand, but then attributed it to an outside source. He stood up sharply and pulled a dagger from his belt as he looked off to the trees. "Who's there! Show yourself, you coward!!"

The other men stood up as their comrade did and looked off toward the trees; picking up weapons to arm themselves with in case they should be under attack. It was ridiculous to think that they should be under attack even in Heaven, but with so many English there it wasn't hard for them to imagine that they would be. After all, English were cowards and bullies.

"Sorry!" called Robin as he jogged out of the trees and held up his hands to the men pulling out their swords and daggers. "Lost my arrow. Thought I was shooting at a rabbit." The man Robin had apparently singled out was like a giant compared to him and Robin wasn't a short man at all. He moved closer toward them and smiled at them. "You lot look as though you are enjoying yourselves! Having a good hunt in this wonderful haven?"

"English dog!" spat the big man. "How can you think a mug of ale is a rabbit! You could've taken my hand off with a shot like that."

"Blind as well as stupid, I bet. Typical English," sneered a thin, reedy man near Robin as he stood in their circle.

Robin continued to smile faintly toward them as they looked as though they were wondering if they could kill a spirit like themselves. Robin would have been more perplexed that each of them was still able to use weapons in a place like Heaven, but he didn't like to get into theology when faced with six angry Frenchmen who looked as though Robin's head would be fun to kick around for a while. "As I said," said Robin slowly, "I thought I saw a rabbit and shot. I didn't see a ham fisted, ugly brute with a tiny mug of ale waiting to be splashed by his own drink. Oh no, that would be far too dreadful of me."

The reedy man looked to his fellows and snorted derisively. "For a cowardly Englishman you seem to have balls for coming to us in our own territory and threatening us with your puny little arrows."

"Yes, balls of solid rock as my friend John would say," said Robin, smirking faintly. "And you, sir, have the face of a rat… a small, beady eyed rat what eats the rubbish from the poorest tables."

"Who do you think you are?" snarled a third man, this one younger than the others. "You dare come here and take a shot at my comrades? This is heaven! What sort of bastard picks a fight in heaven when we are supposed to be resting in peace?!" The boy reminded Robin of a cross between Much and Will with his youth and passion, with his ideology.

Robin smiled faintly toward the boy and leaned on his bow slightly. "My boy, I am nothing more than a hunter having lost his way 'round this rather maze like place, but your friends are being rather rude to me and I want an apology for their rudeness before I get very irritated."

"Apology?!" cried out the reedy man. "You've got some nerve demanding an apology from us!"

"And you've got some nerve talking to me with that rat like face. Maybe you play the woman for the ham fisted fellow," said Robin quickly. Robin just managed to duck the reedy man's fist before he realized that he still had the others to worry about and received a good blow to the jaw by the ham fisted fellow that knocked him off his feet. Oh, what Robin would give to have Little John at his back right then!

The lot of them seemed very intent on taking his head from his shoulders, so Robin kept his head down and burrowed his way through the men like a mole as they tried to keep a hold on his limbs. He rolled away as one man stomped at his face and picked himself up with his bow in hand to shoot off an arrow through the man's ear, which forced him backward, screaming his head off. He pulled another arrow and jammed it into the knee of another man before ripping it out with some force and shooting it off at the reedy man's hand. The reedy fellow dropped his sword quickly and shrieked like a woman as he held his hand in shock.

Robin smirked. "I was right, you're a woman," he said and was promptly knocked off his feet by the ham-fisted Frenchman, the Goliath to his apparent David. That was all right, though. Robin had dealt with worse situations and he did want a good fight. He rubbed his head for a moment before rolling away quickly to avoid the man crushing him with a large boulder of a rock that he had lifted up while Robin had been dazed from the previous blow. The rock came down and he could hear the dull sound of it echo in his ears as he darted right between the man's legs and rolled away. He got to his feet and strung his bow quickly, shooting it off into the man's knee.

One other man stood with a bow and arrow strung up as well as the young man with a sword drawn. They stood on either side of Robin and looked to each other as though uncertain as to how to proceed. Robin smiled faintly and lowered his head slightly. His hat had fallen off his head and into the grass when he had been playing keep away with the other men and his black, curly hair hung in messy curtains around his face. "Seems you two have the advantage of numbers," said Robin, panting slightly though he didn't really feel tired.

"Just… just leave," said the young man. "We don't want to fight you. Not here. We're already dead."

"Yes, we are," said Robin slowly, "But that doesn't mean you can't stir up a bit of a brawl when you get bored enough."

"Who are you!" shouted the archer.

"Well, now," said Robin before he looked toward the young man, "If I said my name that might get me in trouble wouldn't it."

"Just shut up and shoot him in the head, Maurice!" shouted the reedy man.

"Really now," said Robin. "Maurice is it? Nice name, that. A good French name. Do you know what I used to be best at, Maurice?"

"What?" Robin smiled eerily at him, making Maurice sweat harder; his fingers tugging the string back a bit harder. "What is it that you used to be good at, damn it?!"

"Mind games," said Robin, "Especially with hapless archers that got scared at the sight of one who was much better at the art than himself." He ducked and dove into the archer's legs. The man let off his arrow as he was bowled over by Robin's hit and let out a shout as he went down. The young man moved toward them with his sword raised and swinging down. Robin whipped his knife out and jammed it into the archer's shoulder as he pulled out one of his arrows and jabbed it right into the youth's neck.

Robin wasn't certain if they could die again, but he was certainly glad that the youth had enough power in his legs to stop himself from running headlong into the point of the arrow as Robin might have done to a man he truly didn't like. Instead, Robin was rewarded with an audible gulp and the sight of blood coloring the tip of his arrowhead. The archer he was sitting on top of with his knife jammed into the man's shoulder was being very cooperative and not moving an inch further.

"The best mind games to play, however," said Robin, smiling faintly, tasting a bit of blood and dirt on his lip where the blows to his face had split it, "are the ones that include rather interesting timing puzzles. You never know if you can execute a move properly with enough speed that your target will be somewhat frightened by you or you will be hit by the strung arrow and get skewered by the prepared sword."

"Who… are you?" asked the ham-fisted man. "You were not on the battle field. I would have heard of a man like you."

"Robin of Loxley," said Robin, smirking. He felt better than he had since he was much younger and alive. "Sir Robin of Loxley, though that title is arguable."

"Robin of Loxley? Jean, have you heard that name before?" asked the reedy man to the ham-fisted one.

"_Non_, I have not. I would remember someone like this," said Jean. Typical. As usual Robin's given name was no good to anyone outside of the upper class.

"Then, how about Robin the Hood, eh?" asked Robin, looking a bit irritated.

"I have. Those filthy English were telling their comrades a tale one night when my troupe found them. It was easy to sit and listen for a while. He's a myth. A fairy tale to give children hope." Robin suddenly noticed that the man he'd clipped the ear off of was a very ugly man indeed with eyes too pale and bulgy for his head so much that he resembled a frog or an insect. He grinned unpleasantly toward Robin, showing that he was missing several of his teeth, even in this heavenly place. "Guess what? I like games too, monsieur."

"And what, praytell, do you like to play?" asked Robin, eyeing the man warily.

"I liked taking those men telling their tales down, strip them of their flesh and feed it to the dogs while they were still alive and twitching," said the unpleasant, frog eyed me. "And I like ripping apart mythical men like you!"

"Enough!"

Robin moved away sharply, pulling his knife out of the archer's shoulder as he did so. The frog eyed man lunged after him, but was forced backward by a force so strong that he landed on his rear at least ten feet away from his original position. Robin looked up and saw God standing in front of him, his rage quite apparent. Perhaps Robin had been a bit too rash to prick God's ire after all.

The Frenchmen scurried off quickly, grabbing their comrades up as they stumbled off toward the village. Robin watched them leave for moment before looking up at God once more. He soon realized that he was sitting in an oak chair and God was sitting behind a large, finely crafted oak desk as he glared at him from across its expanse. When had he changed from the French parts to a study? The room he had suddenly found himself in was like the richest of studies, with books on every wall, fine tapestries of lions and unicorns and the carpet spread underneath them both was of a deep red and gold hue.

Robin looked to God after a while and picked his hat off the top of the desk and placed it on his head. "And what has God have to say to me?"

"I could ask the same, Robin," said God softly. Robin could hear the edge in his tone and knew he had probably reached his end a little too effectively. "Why are you picking a fight with the French?"

"Why else? Because I'm bored, of course," said Robin, putting on an airy tone, though he hardly felt it. He was too busy formulating possibilities of escaping should he have to.

God snorted and moved back in his chair. "I've seen bored men, Robin, and you are definitely not one of them. You prefer being left alone to your own devices and your own end."

"Indeed, but today I sort of missed having a good brawl," said Robin quickly.

"You've refused the opportunity to leave Heaven to be reborn, Robin. You also refused the looking glass portals to watch over humanity. As it stands, you were never actually meant to leave this place because you were made specifically for that one life that you were given," said God. He sighed and shook his head, moving his head away from Robin as though he were looking away, though Robin couldn't actually see any face on him.

"And? I want to see what is happening down there," said Robin.

"That's easy enough to do Robin and all you have to do to do it is look through those mirrors," said God softly.

"I want to see it for myself,"

"Then, be reborn."

"How can I be reborn if I wasn't meant to be reborn at all?"

God eyed Robin rather impatiently and leaned on his desk once more, fixing Robin with a hard stare, though Robin couldn't see it. He certainly could feel God's eyes boring into his. "You can be reborn if you wish, Robin. It's up to you. I only said I had not intended for you to be reborn. There is a difference. I intend a lot of things to happen, but sometimes, as with everything in the world I created, things don't always go the way I intend for them to."

"I lived my life well enough, thanks. I don't think going through that again is my bag. Especially puberty. Nasty patch, that," said Robin with a rather flippant wave of his hand.

"There is an order to things, Robin. There is a system to the way things are run here because it keeps the worlds in balance with each other," said God slowly.

"I don't give a shit about balance. I want to see—I want to know—what the fuck is happening down there. I have this feeling inside my gut that won't leave me alone, ever since I watched the multitudes of French and English arrive. And that bloke back there said I'm a myth now…" Robin stopped talking after a moment of thought and then leaned back into his own chair silently.

"I can't let you down there, Robin," said God after a while, "But I have something that will give you the chance to see it as if you were down there." He reached into the desk and pulled out a small, silver hand mirror from a drawer full of small mirrors and placed it on the desk in front of him. "Just think of where you want to be and you will see it. This is the only thing I can offer you, Robin, at this point in time."

Robin eyed the thing in thought. It was certainly better than not going down at all, but admitting so seemed like a defeat in itself and that stuck hard in Robin's craw. He reached out a gloved hand and took the mirror gently. "All I have to do is imagine where I want to be and it will show me? A bit small for viewing things, isn't it?"

"It's bigger than it appears, Robin. Just be gentle with it. I don't like it when they have to reform," said God, smiling faintly. Robin stood and walked toward the door, but God's voice broke into his thoughts as he spoke from the desk. "But be certain that sometimes it is best not to know what you have seen. It can't be unseen." Robin looked over his shoulder toward God and then left quickly for the haven of his Sherwood perch, the mirror tightly held in his gloved hand. He would soon see what it was that seemed to call to him so suddenly.


	4. Chapter Three

_**A/N: Chewy's sleeping under my lapdesk, against my foot. XD I need to go shopping, but I'll do it later. I don't feel like moving the little guy. Also, I've discovered a game that seems interesting. Florensia kept freezing my computer up so I took it off. I found one called Zu Online and it's a Chinese mythology type game. Not too bad. ^^ I like playing my Bead Fairy. She's level 46 right now. Also, it's really REALLY easy to make money and level in the game, so my level isn't that much really. Once your pet in the game gets to be level 30 you can ride him around, which is an absolute God send. Your pet's a bit slower to level, but keep those pet foods he digs up because you'll need those to keep him around.**_

_Chapter Three_

Robin sat on his lonely little branch in the big Sherwood Forest mock up that Heaven seemed so fond of providing him and stared into the small, silver hand mirror in his hand. It was ornately decorated with swirls and vines all around it. On the back was a great tree with birds and things coming out of it. Robin recognized the imagery. It was the Tree of Life.

As he leaned against the trunk of the tree and gazed into the mirror, he realized just how scruffy appeared to everyone. He snorted and looked at his goatee carefully. As usual it was somewhat pointy and well kept to an extent, though he also showed signs of needing a bit of a shave. When he thought of it, the stubble disappeared from his face and the beard became more groomed in its appearance. The lines he had grown accustomed to long ago were not present on his somewhat tanned skin; instead he had smoothed skin around his mouth, cheeks and eyes. The gray and white hairs he had found so irritating were not present; instead his hair was as black as it had been when he was a younger man. His eyes, though, still held the true age of him inside them. He moved the mirror away sharply and looked to the ground below him.

"Robin?"

Robin looked down directly under him to see a beautiful woman with long dark curls in her hair and a fair, rosy cheeked face. "Hello, Marian. I see you've found me at last," he said, smirking toward her, though it was partially hidden by his scarf.

Marian looked up at him in irritation. "I only recently heard that you were sticking around to these parts of the wood," she said, putting her hands on her hips and reminding him more of his mother than the woman he had fancied for a time, "I would have expected you to come 'round the Sherwood village constructed here."

"Not I, Marian," said Robin. He paused and looked toward the encampment, feeling as though he didn't belong anywhere now. "I always liked to keep to the trees, you remember that."

Marian didn't look the least bit convinced. She shook her head after a moment and looked around the tree before hefting herself up the trunk a bit. Robin chuckled. "Tomboy."

"You and my brother ignored me unless I could keep up with you, right? I had to learn somehow!" said Marian. She smiled as she pulled herself up onto the branch that he sat on and straddled it carefully. She laughed heartily and resembled more of the little girl that had run after him and his friend when they were children than a woman whom he had been in love with so long ago. However, when her cousin, the king, had left again as he often never stayed in England Robin and Marian's life fell pray to the nobles squabbling and the Sheriff taking over again. Marian couldn't marry Robin as they had wished because, to everyone but her, he was a threat.

The things Robin could remember about his life seemed to never end and they only grew more painful whenever they were good, happy moments that were ripped away from him. The men under his care killed by the Sheriff's men, the woman he had thought about marrying since he was a young man, the father that he had learned to love and appreciate after being imprisoned away from him only to find him gutted like a common pig and burned, the home he had known for all his life, all of them, were things that he had loved and they had been taken forcibly away from him. Marian's appearance made that pain even more apparent.

"Aren't you going to be reborn at some point?" asked Robin a bit stiffly.

"Yes, I will, I heard from Will that you stayed here in these parts rather than with them, so I felt I must see you before I go back down again," said Marian, smiling a gentle smile toward him. It grew sad as she gazed at him and she leaned closer toward him. He stiffened slightly at her move and she stopped. "Are you afraid of me now? The great Robin Hood afraid of a kiss?" she teased.

Robin smirked faintly and reached a gloved hand up to his scarf, pulling it away from his face. She reached a hand up and stroked his cheek and his lips gently, smiling sadly toward him with her warm, brown eyes. "You have been through so much, Robin. Both of us have, but you more so than I. Let the warmth and love of God heal you if you won't let me to."

Robin unbuckled the many buckles on his fitted archer glove and pulled it off in his lap before reaching up to touch her hand. It was as soft and warm as he had remembered it. Marian's smile was just as warm as he remembered it as well. He looked away from her after a moment and put her hand in his lap, holding it gently in his hand. "I find it somewhat amusing that you're attempting to console me for no particular reason," he said finally.

Marian shoved at him sharply, making a rather impatient noise in the back of her throat as she did so. "You're impossible, Robin! As usual, you won't admit to having any sort of actual weakness… even to me."

Robin didn't let go of her hand, though. He simply continued to hold onto it and look down at it. He saw the ring he had given her as a mark of their love for one another sitting on her finger. A strange sensation inside him built up as he gazed down at it before he lifted her hand and brought her knuckles to his lips, kissing them gently. Marian stilled and watched him, smiling faintly. "We were never very good for one another," said Robin softly. "I like getting into trouble and you like trying to follow after me."

"Because I have always wanted to be beside you and enjoy myself the way you do," she said softly. Robin looked up at her and his brilliant green eyes seemed so bright now that they practically glowed in the half light of the forest. Marian, entranced as she had once been when they were alive, could only gaze into them as she was fixed to the spot by them. "Robin…?"

Robin leaned forward and caught her close to prevent her from falling from the tree, kissing her gently as he had not done for so very long. Marian fair melted against him and held onto him, a tear going over her cheek silently as she kissed him. They remained locked together, touching and holding each other as they kissed like the pair of love birds his men often remarked on. When they moved apart, Marian jumped down onto the ground and straightened her gown and hair slowly, looking away from Robin's hot gaze.

"So you will not follow with me to be reborn?" asked Marian after a moment of silence.

"I don't have a reason to go back as a human, Marian," said Robin, "I'm a myth after all and myths should remain myths."

Marian rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Perhaps one of these days you will follow after me and we might actually marry on Earth as once we had hoped to do."

"That will be a day when Earth and Heaven are reunited, Marian," said Robin softly. He smiled gently after a moment and hopped off his perch to stand beside her. He placed his hands on her shoulders and made her look up at him before leaning close and kissing her forehead.

"You always shove me away," said Marian in a small voice. "Always always shove me away from you when I think I might just be a little closer to understanding you."

Robin shook his head and smiled faintly at her. "I know," he said, "But I have never liked opening myself up to anyone."

"Fool. Ridiculous, stupid… fool," chided Marian. She blew impatiently between her lips before pulling him down for another kiss, a more heated one than the last. It was so much that Robin was nearly pulled off his feet by her insistence, though he definitely responded in kind. When she finally let him go, she grinned up at him, her brown eyes twinkling up at him. "But a fool I shall always love, even when I can not be with you in this place. Do me a favor, Robin?"

"Anything, Marian," he said, smirking a little at her attitude.

"Find someone that will keep you in line a lot better than I can. Lord knows I've tried my best to do good by you, but you never really listened to me at all. You simply got worse after you came here." Robin laughed at her, though she knew she was being serious. She smiled a bit at him and stroked his cheek before turning and leaving. "I'll be back again, when my new life is over, but I will keep going back as I am meant to do. I hope you'll watch over me, though."

"I shall endeavor to try, m'lady," said Robin, bowing toward her. Marian laughed and walked off quickly, disappearing in the mist of the wood. Robin watched after her even after she had gone off. When he did finally move back up onto his lonesome little tree branch, he pulled the mirror out and looked into it one more time.

"I want to see my people, want to know how they remember me if they do at all," he said.

The silence in the wood was deafening. It was as though suddenly everything around him had disappeared. Then, everything around him changed suddenly and he found himself standing in a different set of woods, where a group of travelers telling each other stories to pass the time. He waved to them to see if they could see him and found he could see through his own hand where in Heaven he was solid.

"I want to hear a tale of Robin Hood!" cried a young boy walking next to what appeared to be his mother.

"Robin Hood is nothing by a story, lad. Pick someone more interesting like King Richard the Lionheart to have a tale about," said a man, "Now there is a man worth learning about!"

"But I want to hear about Robin Hood!" The boy seemed as though he would be hard pressed to be shaken from this course of action.

The mother smiled faintly and nodded. "I know one," said the woman as a man picked up the boy and put him on his shoulders, presumably his father. "My father used to tell us many tales of Robin Hood when we were growing up."

"Ridiculous tales. History is far more interesting," said the same man as before.

Robin followed after them and listened to the mother tell a tale about him, but soon found it too ridiculous to listen to. The way the tale came out it made him sound like he was some sort of saint! Always robbing from the rich to give to the poor, always putting himself in front of others to protect them, always this, always that; it was no wonder why the old man seemed to think history was more interesting that Ol' Robin!

Robin, disgusted by what he listened to, walked away from the people and looked into the mirror in his hand. "Oh give me a break," he groaned loudly, "You can't be serious in telling me that the people of England make me out to be some sort of saint!"

The scenery changed and there was a great hall and a noblewoman was embroidering a tapestry and humming to herself as she did so. On it, Robin could clearly read "The Tale of Robin Hood" as well as a figure of what he presumed had to be him, but the figure was of a short man wearing bright green. Well, if that had been the case, the Sheriff would have had no difficulty in finding him easily in the woods wearing that hue of green! Robin was so much more handsome than the man this woman was depicting him as!

Once more the imagery disappeared and Robin soon found himself visiting other areas. A town boasting a tree where his men and he lived, a house where he had stayed, and an arrow he had strung up and shot; there seemed to be no end to the absurdity of his fame. The most galling one came up last, however.

He found himself in front of a priory, one he was all too familiar with. He gazed at it with disgust and saw some people walk up to its doors and found himself inside it once again. The rooms he had known back there were far different now. The nun came out and spoke to the people and lead them around the place, smiling genially as she did so.

"A former reverend mother took in Robin the Hood and took him up into one of the cells upstairs. He was very sickly and was going to die from his illness. He knew it himself, but his man took him here to escape the clutches of the Sheriff anyway," said the nun, still smiling at the people. "The Sheriff found out about it and sent his men to come fetch Robin, but our reverend mother wouldn't allow it. Instead she helped them escape and he died outside with his man carrying him away. He's buried on our grounds. Just outside there. I'll show you for a small donation, if you wish."

"Yes! Please, I would love to see where he's buried," said a young man. He dropped a couple of coins into a charity box and then the nun smiled and waved over a novice. The novice curtsied to the people and ushered them out to a sort of grave marker with "RH" scratched into a weathered stone. "This is where he lies now?" asked the man again.

"It was found when we moved the priory. We've kept it up in honor of him," said the novice, smiling weakly. She didn't look too convinced.

Robin snorted. If the novice didn't look convinced he could hardly have blamed her. He knew where he had been buried and it was further in the woods, though they might have picked up the stones and placed them next to their priory to get money. That wasn't the most galling aspect of it, though. The nuns had changed history to suit themselves and make their little house of women look better for it. That made Robin angry beyond comprehension and yet hardly surprised him which made it that much more disgusting to him.

In the end, when the imagery faded and he was once more standing in the middle of Heaven's version of Sherwood Forest, he simply stowed the mirror away into his belt pouch, hopped up onto his lonesome little tree branch and went unconscious to the world once more. If his name was being used to bolster others into believe rubbish and using his name and memory for their own selfish gains, then he reasoned he might as well just ignore them all. He would not be a contributor to his newfound mythology.


	5. Chapter Four

_**A/N: I can't wait for Christmas. XD I love giving presents. I like to watch my friends open up stuff I've made for them or bought for them and watch them giggle with glee. XD Speaking of which, I need to wrap presents. 3 I'm a bit absent minded, yeah. o3o**_

_Chapter Four_

The woods outside of the village of Domremy were peaceful, far more peaceful than the rest of the country. Inside these old woods and field stood old remnants of the Romans when they occupied the land, however, they were merely old monuments to an old culture long gone. The stone was weathered and the faces and designs smoothed from the elements. A stone cross stood in the middle of everything from a much later time, so its designs were still visible somewhat to the casual viewer.

The children often played out in these old ruins, though their parents bade them to stay close to the village. The English were a constant threat as they sent raiding parties through to steal food and supplies from the poor folk of the village and generally frighten the villagers. If it wasn't the English, then it was the Burgundians who came through. This was because the village was in a part still loyal to France and not to England.

A girl walked into the ruins and began playing around the old remnants as she sang a song to herself. She was small and thin with long blonde hair and bright blue eyes, with a generally happy look upon her fair face. She hopped up onto a stone that looked like it might have been a chair at some point in its life and sat upon it, looking up at the sky with a smile on her face.

It was then that she heard the voices. They were beautiful voices, voices like angels singing, as they spoke to one another in whispers. It was as though the girl was stuck to the back of the room while the "adults" discussed important matters. But was even stranger was that the girl was not frightened by them at all. To her it felt as natural to hear them as hearing birds sing.

"God said we must speak to her, Mag," said a beautiful male voice, "And if you think I'm disobeying him, you're insane."

"She's just a child, Micha'el!" cried a female voice. "I'll not tell her anything!"

"Micha'el is right, Margaret," said another female voice, this one softer, "We must speak to her what we were told to."

"It's Michael!" cried the male voice. This time a beautiful man with white wings appeared and gazed in irritation toward two women as they appeared. "I know my name is supposed to be said as Micha'el, but for the love of God would you please say it as Michael! It's easy, see? My-call. Understand?"

The girl blinked and gazed up at the three people with wide blue eyes. Michael looked over and smiled sheepishly before disappearing quickly with a loud popping sound. "Oops! I mean"—he coughed and cleared his throat for a moment—"Greetings, Jeanne. I am Micha'el, angel of the lord's army and this is Saint Margaret and Saint Catherine." The two women rolled their eyes and shook their heads before smiling at Jeanne in a friendly manner.

However, something stopped them from speaking further as they looked away from Jeanne and then looked back, smiling apologetically. "We're sorry, Jeanne," said Catherine softly, "But is seems we've got the day wrong. We'll see you again, count on that."

Jeanne's face twisted slightly into a saddened one as she reached after Catherine and Margaret. "No! Please don't leave!" she cried to them.

"We have to. We'll see you again, Jeanne," said Margaret, "God is calling us back to him." Then, they disappeared and Jeanne was left alone, staring into empty space. Tears rolled over her cheeks as realization came to her of who spoke to her and how beautiful they all were. Such intense beauty and warmth clenched at Jeanne's little heart when it was forcibly taken away from her that she couldn't keep herself from crying and starting back for her home to tell her father and mother and brothers of the event.

However, something else stopped her from leaving immediately. Off to the side of her vision she felt as though someone were watching her. She turned to see a man sitting under a tree, his clothes were of an older time and looked to be richly made and a beautiful shade of green with gold embroidery, but worn, faded and dirty as though he had practically lived in those clothes without washing them properly. His skin was tanned slightly, though she saw little of it. His face was partially obscured by an extremely long, greenish-gray scarf that was wound round his neck and left the ends to drape over his shoulders. He also wore a brown, wide brimmed hat with a lot of feathers in its brim from various birds, a couple seemed to be pheasant tail feathers and others looked like smaller bird feathers, that covered part of his face as well as the scarf did.

Jeanne's heart pounded in her chest as fear suddenly gripped her. He was not like the saints she just saw, but something other. Was he a ghost? Jeanne did not know and wondered if she shouldn't simply run away quickly to avoid waking up the figure before her.

A little too late, however.

The figure's head lifted up and she saw a face as beautiful as an angel's in his dark features. Indeed, he had relatively tanned skin, possibly from being in the sun, and his hair was as black as night and curled somewhat. He had high cheek bones and a fine, black goatee that was rather pointy and well groomed despite the rest of his appearance being rather dirty. But his eyes are what startled her. His eyes were the brightest, most beautiful emerald green she had ever seen. They were so green that they seemed to glow from beneath that wide brimmed hat he wore. Beside him was a bow and quiver and he held in his hand a small, silver hand mirror that shined in the light of the sun as though it were not real but made of the same fantasy that the man came from.

The man eyed her carefully and scratched his cheek with a hand that was clearly clad in a very particularly fashioned archer's glove that was fitted all the way to his elbow with buckles and straps and sported a long piece of leather on the inside of his arm as cover from a bow string while the rest of his arm was only covered by the straps holding it on. On his other hand he wore the mate to the strange glove. His dirty, off-white shirt was rolled back to his elbows and tied so as to allow room for his strange gloves as well.

He raised an inquisitive eyebrow at her after a moment and looked to the mirror in his hand before looking back to Jeanne with a somewhat perplexed expression. Jeanne stepped backward, fear getting the better of her. "Who… are you a ghost?" she asked. "Or are you demon?"

She jumped when he started laughing and leaned back against the tree he sat beneath. "Child," he spoke, his French odd, but understandable, "I am little more than a spirit, thank you. I am dead."

"Then, why are you here and not in heaven?" asked Jeanne. "What's your name?"

"I was in heaven," said the ghost softly, "But it seems something has gone amiss. I was having a nice nap in heaven when I woke up to you standing there."

"Oh." Jeanne wasn't certain what to make of the ghost, but the reassurance that he wasn't a spirit made her relax a little. She moved a little closer and clutched the little wooden cross around her neck. "What is your name?"

"Robin," said the ghost. "And yours, _demoiselle_?"

"Jeanne."

"Well, then, Jeanne," said Robin. He looked to mirror in his hand and then held it up to Jeanne. "Do you see anything in this?"

"I.. see myself," said Jeanne. However, as she looked at her reflection, she was awarded with a strange vision of men dying by the sword, by English swords. The blood spraying from the victims was undoubtedly French and sprayed across the image of the fleur-de-lis. In the center of all the devastation stood a woman dressed in armor, her hair cut to that of a man and a sort of skirt connected to her waist under plate armor and chainmail. In her hand she held a sword aloft, a sword with five fleur-de-lis in a row on the blade itself.

Robin took the mirror away and looked into it once again. "Odd," said Robin softly, pushing the brim of his hat up a little. "When I look into it I see this place reflected inside it and then I see you standing before me in these old ruins."

Jeanne, now frightened beyond comprehension backed away quickly from Robin. "I'm sorry, monsuier, but I"—she looked around quickly as though she was looking for an escape—"I must go home and help mama! Bye!" Then, she ran swiftly away from the strange ghost with his strange little circular hand mirror. When she told her father and mother about hearing the voices, they seemed to not believe her and told her it was merely her imagination running away with her. She dared not tell them about the spirit and the mirror, for she feared she might have been visited by a demon trying to tempt her somehow.

* * *

Robin found the field and the old ruins calming, but the girl running way from him really made him wonder what exactly she saw in the little mirror that he did not. Judging by how pale she had become and how frightened she was he had to conclude that whatever it was that she saw was not the least bit pleasant at all. When Robin looked up again, the old ruin had disappeared entirely and he was once more sitting on his little tree perch.

"How odd," he muttered and stowed the mirror away. Perhaps for a human not yet out of their body they had a different reaction to the mirror than one in heaven. Either way, he hoped the child was not permanently damaged by the experience. Now, there was only the problem of the archangel Michael and those two women that were supposed to be saints. What was it the three had been discussing before they had left and what was it they had to do with the girl? They had said to the girl that they would see her again someday. Robin was going to keep an eye on the girl and the trio then.

As if on cue, Robin found himself in God's office suddenly. This time the colors were muted inside the room, though they still held the typical red and gold scheme. "Hello, God," said Robin as he leaned back and put his feet up on God's oak desk. "What is it the Almighty wishes to speak to me about?"

"That mirror," said God, eyeing Robin wearily, "You showed it to someone."

"Yes, that is usually what one does with a mirror," Robin as he crossed his arms and legs.

"You showed it to a living human," snapped God impatiently. "Don't do it again, please. They can create a royal mess if used improperly. That's why I don't typically give them out."

Robin found God's ire rather amusing and hid his smirk behind his scarf. "Indeed, what do living humans see, then?"

"They see what will come to pass," said God. "They see the future. No one's meant to see the future, except a rare few that are born with the gift to do so. Those I design especially. A normal, living, human must not be able to see the future or else they could go mad when they see it."

"So, seers are special and normal people are not?" Robin snorted and shook his head. "Men and women have been scrying for centuries, old man. This should be no different."

"But it is," said God quietly, steepling his fingers as he leaned forward slightly on his desk, "It is because she was made to see as I make the seers able to do. As I said, it's a talent that I give to specific people. Like magic. The only people who have magic are witches."

"I thought 'thou shalt not suffer a witch to live' and all that," said Robin, eyeing God lazily from under the brim of his hat.

"That's a misunderstanding, lost in translation and all that. The word isn't witch, it's homosexual. Homosexuals by their very nature are against my design and thus unnatural. Why do you think I got rid of Sodom and Gomorra? It was because all the people were depraved and against the way I made things work. Since they irritated me I got rid of them." God sighed and shook his head slowly. Robin noticed that God seemed to have gold colored hair, long hair that resembled a slick lion mane, but he still could not see his face, or rather, his face was completely unfocused and hard to look at because of this.

"Are homosexuals then unable to reach heaven?" asked Robin after a moment, curious. He had seen at least one man become a cleric simply because he wanted to feel closer to God and because, if he had not married and produced children, his family would suspect him of being a homosexual. In a way Robin felt sorry for them that they should have to treat themselves as though they were ugly monsters.

"No, they may reach heaven. Despite them being against the nature of things, I love them for they are still my children. What sort of father would I be if I could not love even the ones I can not wholly understand?" God smiled faintly and bowed his head slightly toward Robin. "Just don't show it to anymore living humans again, please. I'd rather not have one go mad from it."

"What of the girl?" asked Robin. "Will she go mad because of what she saw in the mirror?"

"No, she will not. In fact she is someone rather special," said God as he seemed to grin brilliantly toward Robin. "I'm rather proud of her, actually. I know she will be a great woman one day."

"Bear great sons and all that?"

God went oddly silent and leaned back in his chair. "No," he said after a moment of silence, "But she will be great no less."

Robin was instantly suspicious and he hardly knew why he cared except that the girl was a child still. He decided he would leave it be and pursue it at a later hour, though he hardly knew how time passed in the Great Beyond. There was also something that interested him about his conversation with God. God had said there were witches who used actual magic. Robin wondered if perhaps he might meet one eventually. In the end, he could simply only wait to see what other information he could gather.


	6. Chapter Five

_**A/N: lalalala it's freakin' cold and apparently I missed the notice that there was a concert today. Also, I have a shimmery thermos now. :D**_

_**And Papa seems to be bitching about nothing in particular again. *rolls eyes***_

_**Chapter Five**_

The field and ruins of Domremy were as still as they had been when she had been a child. Jeanne looked on in wonder as they had remained unchanging in their positions. After the day when she had heard Saint Michael, Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret, she had gone to the field every day to see if she couldn't find them again, but alas she did not hear them or see them ever again. And the spirit in the ruins? She stayed as far away as she dared to for fear that he had not been a spirit of a human but a demon. Eventually, her reasoning had taken over and she started visiting the old ruins to find the spirit and confront him. After all, a demon only had power over your soul if you allowed him that power by being afraid of him.

Instead she found no one in the ruins, just as she found no saints in the field. She eventually wondered if she had heard and seen anything at all. Why would God want an angel and two saintly women to speak to her, after all? She was a peasant girl, a farmer's daughter in a small village in the middle of no where. She wasn't special in any respect. Her mother, however, would have argued that to God even an uneducated peasant girl was special.

And so Jeanne walked to the ruins. After so long of not seeing the spirit or the saints, she figured she might not have seen them at all and that perhaps the ruins would be just as she had seen them on any other day. Though she was a little older than when she last saw the visions in the mirror and seen the saints talking to her, she was still a child inside in many respects. The old fear of ghosts and goblins haunted her inside, though she marched on bravely.

In the field she saw nothing. She picked up a long stick and started playing with it, pretending she was helping her brothers in their play-fighting, though she knew they would never allow her to join their games. That was a boy's game, not a girl's game to play. She stopped swinging the stick, however, when she heard voices speaking. They were as beautiful as she heard the last time, speaking in musical tones to her ears as though angels were whispering to her. She looked up and two spectral women stood shrouded in heavenly light so that it was hard for Jeanne to gaze upon them.

"She has come, Mag," said Saint Catherine, smiling faintly. "It is time we speak to her, I believe, if only to inform her of what she must do."

"She is still only a child. Fourteen is far too young to carry off something as important as this," said Saint Margaret.

"Jesus managed to converse and debate with men three times his age at the age of twelve or thirteen, Magaret, why not a fourteen year old girl go and convince the Dauphin that God is on France's side in this rather ridiculous conflict," said Saint Catherine as she smiled faintly toward Jeanne. "Jeanne, did you hear what I just told my friend here?"

"That God is on France's side?" asked Jeanne tentatively.

"It is your duty to bring that message to the Dauphin. Tell him that he needs to allow you to join the troops against the English, that with you at their front line they will surely win back France," said Catherine.

Saint Margaret looked somewhat put off by Saint Catherine before sighing in defeat and looking seriously at Jeanne. "Borrow your armor, borrow your sword, borrow your horse and your guard, but go with your own conviction and your brave heart. You are meant to do this, Jeanne," said Magaret, "We will always watch over you."

"But, what if I can't make it now?" asked Jeanne, fear striking her heart a little. How could she ever manage to go through Burgundian territory to get to Chinon on her own? She would need to inform her parents, but if she did then her parents would surely keep her where she was.

"You ladies seem to think that picking on a young girl will encourage her to be a soldier or something," said a lazy voice. Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret looked quickly behind Jeanne to the ruins, looking incredibly irritated.

"You are eavesdropping, Robert!" said Margaret sharply. "Go back to where you belong! You have no place in all of this!"

"Oh, but I think I do. At least to me I do," said Robin, smirking faintly behind that dirty, gray-green scarf that he always wore around his neck.

"God will hear of this trespass on his orders, Robin," said Saint Catherine softly.

"I don't particularly care. Besides, it seems as though Mr. I'm-an-angel-in-the-Lord's-great-army seems to be coming over for a bit of a chat with you two." Indeed, Saint Michael appeared from no where with a loud popping sound and looked sourly at Robin before looking to Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret.

"First you don't want to have anything to do with this plot and now you want to execute it prematurely! Make up your minds, you two!" said Saint Michael as he waved his arms around in exasperation.

"Well, given that we can't really tell time where we are anyway it's a little hard to tell when it's too early and not," said Margaret as she eyed Michael in mild irritation.

Jeanne, meanwhile, decided looking at Robin was better than trying to keep up with what seemed to be a small disagreement of terms with Saint Michael and Saint Margaret. Robin gazed at her from his position in the ruins, leaning against the great stone cross at his back and crossing his arms in front of his chest. He smiled faintly, though Jeanne could only partially discern it from the scarf obscuring part of his handsome face. For the first time since she first saw him she felt heat touch her cheeks as she gazed at him.

"Jeanne," said Saint Catherine after a while, "Please try to go to Chinon and see the Dauphin. It is necessary that you see him directly and tell him that God will bring France out from under England's thumb. Please, Jeanne."

Jeanne nodded quickly. "I… I will try very hard," she said.

Saint Catherine smiled faintly and the three saints disappeared in the air as though they were nothing. Only Robin remained where he stood leaning on the stone cross and watching her with that ever present smile on his face; although, when the three disappeared, he looked somewhat irritated. Jeanne blinked at Robin and clutched her little wooden cross around her neck. "Why is it you remain?" she asked after a moment of absolute silence.

"Don't pay too much attention to those three. They've been huddled together off and on for a while and being generally conspiratorial," said Robin.

"They called you Robert," said Jeanne quickly, "Is that your Christian name?"

"Yes, it is," said Robin softly, "My given name is Robert d'Loxley." Once more, Jeanne noticed that the way he spoke French was very odd in comparison to the three Saints and everyone else she spoke to. It was as though either the French he spoke was not his native tongue or that he had learned a strange variant. Since Jeanne had never been anywhere but her little village it was hard for her to judge and that unnerved her greatly. "However, I prefer most people to call me Robin," he said after a while.

"Where is Loxley?" asked Jeanne, moving closer to the spirit as much as she dared to do so. She was still very unnerved by a feeling that he did not belong anywhere near those old ruins or the land of France. "I have never heard of it."

"It is a place far away," said Robin, his voice very quiet. "And they are no longer mine to claim."

"You are dead, I would think that would be obvious," said Jeanne quickly.

"Yes, there is that," said Robin. He smirked and sat down on the ground, back to the stone cross. "Are you going to do the bidding of those three?" he asked.

"If they say it is God's will, I should do it swiftly, should I not?" asked Jeanne. For the first time she felt very uncertain of herself as to what to do. She closed her eyes and held the cross, praying silently for peace of mind and courage of heart. When she opened her eyes she found Robin was still gazing at her with those too-brightly colored green eyes of his; an unreadable expression was on his face as he watched her.

"You're very confident in God," said Robin softly. "I knew a man who was as confident in God as you are. He died an old man, but he was always there to bolster my men when they felt far from confident in their course."

"Men?"

But Robin didn't answer. He opened his mouth to say something, but stopped and snapped his head around, looking toward the village. Jeanne's eyes widened and she too looked to the village. There, she saw a plume of smoke coming from her home. "Leave. Hurry," said Robin. He got to his feet and pulled his bow off his shoulder and pulled an arrow out. Then, he pulled the string back and took aim at something coming toward them. He let the arrow loose and Jeanne watched as the spirit arrow hit a man square in the chest and knocked him off his horse. "Run as fast as you can back home, child," he said, "I have no idea how many more will come this way, but I know that if your house is burning now, then you will be safe when you return to it. They won't come back to it once they've lit it up."

Jeanne did as she was told, marveling at the magic of Robin's arrow. She ran past the man on the ground that had fallen because of Robin's arrow and stopped for a moment to look at him. Indeed, Robin's aim had been very sure, though the arrow was gone entirely. Despite the lack of arrow, Jeanne could clearly see the hole in the man's chest where it had been and the blood pouring forth from the wound was very, very real. She gasped at it and ran as hard as she could into the village.

* * *

Indeed, Robin's words had run true. As soon as she had arrived at home her parents had come out of hiding and held her close. She told them about seeing Saint Catherin, Saint Margaret and the angel Michael and what they had told her to do, but they refused to allow her to go anywhere where they couldn't be sure of her safety. She had kept the tale of the spirit archer Robin and his magic arrow that saved her life a secret, certain that her parents would think her truly mad then if she told them.

She tried her best to find ways to leave, but in the end she could only stay and wait. Perhaps the saints would come and tell her what to do, or maybe God might come down and talk to her himself, or Lord Jesus would give her instruction. Either way, she was stuck and for two years she wondered if perhaps she may have missed her opportunity.

When she finally managed to convince a kinsman to take her to Vaucouleurs so that she might convince Count Robert de Baudricourt to allow her to see the Dauphin, he simply laughed at her and she was sent back in short notice.

"Do you think I'm stupid, miss?" said Count de Baudricourt in irritation.

"No, sir," said Jeanne quickly, stiffening herself what was certain to be ridicule.

She wasn't disappointed. Baudricourt laughed and shook his head. "Yes, of course you can go, just as soon as Jesus himself appears and tells me he is a chicken expert and wants to talk about my roosters! Out with you, you silly girl!"

And that was that. Or so Baudricourt had probably hoped, though he would surely be disappointed. Jeanne bided her time, though she grew more and more impatient to try to fulfill what was asked of her. When she came back the next time to Vaucouleurs she found Baudricourt far more appeasing toward her. After all, times were far worse than when she had began and even the prospect of a girl who said God had a message for the King of France was better than nothing at all.

And so she went to Chinon. Jeanne hardly expected much of anything to happen. The court was assembled as though they had been enjoying themselves previously. A young man not much older than herself sat upon the throne looking every bit not as kingly as he probably should have been that moment. He was sweating horribly and looked a bit afraid as he looked at her from across the room. Assured by her faith in the words of Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret that this was what they had been told to tell her she moved forward toward the young man.

And there she saw another sight that startled her. He moved silently among the group of courtiers as though he did not belong there at all. He was a ghost and she knew which ghost it was. She looked on at him in exasperation as this was hardly the time for him to appear to her and start talking.

Or maybe it was the perfect time. Jeanne's head pounded as doubt filtered into her faith. Perhaps she really was just imagining it all and the only thing she was doing now was making a right fool of herself. "I have come to speak with the Dauphin," she said, looking around.

A man moved toward her and smiled condescendingly at her. "Then, speak with him yourself. He is right there."

Jeanne's head pounded more as she gazed at the young man on the throne. This could not have been the future King of France. Every part of her fair screamed this to her brain, which seemed to be the only thing saying "maybe it is. How can we know what he looks like?"

The young man smiled weakly and nodded toward her. "I am.. ah… Ch-charles."

The ghost snorted and shook his head nearer to her now than he had been before. "This is as much a king as I am God himself," said the ghost. The ghost of the strange archer, Robin, looked her in the eye with those brilliant green eyes and shook his head. "Don't believe a word of what they tell you. That is not the king. Given what those three have been doing to you since day one, I don't doubt you already know this and can find him easily. Do so quickly, though."

Jeanne nodded and steeled herself inside, squashing her doubt. She looked the young man in the eyes and she softened her steely gaze, feeling sympathy for the young man for he surely had not meant to deceive her without being put up to the task by others. "You're a good man," she said and then shook her head slowly, "But you are not the King. I want to see the Dauphin."

That same condescending man seemed to materialize next to her and sneered at her. "Then, find him yourself, young woman."

Robin had been right, though she wished it was Saint Catherine talking to her now instead of him. She would have felt far more comforted by any actual saint's presence than she did with the ghost of an archer who by all accounts appeared to be just an ordinary man. She searched through the crowd of courtiers, feeling more alone now than she had before when trying to get here through Burgundian territory. Everyone eyed her with unabashed suspicion that prickled her pride terribly. A good looking fellow, though a bit greasy, stepped forward as she moved by. He seemed to think that just by looking at her she would fall for his charms. She moved away from him and found herself faced by more men trying to sway her from her task.

It was then that she saw a man hiding behind everyone, watching with a wary gaze. Robin smirked as he watched from his position as she moved closer toward the man. Jeanne had found the Dauphin in this group of revelers and non-believers. However, when she made a move toward the man, Robin watched as the three men that trying to sway her decision toward them pulled out daggers and put them to her throat. Robin wondered if he shouldn't just smack one on the head, but stayed put to see how things would pan out. After all, this was her battle, not his. That and he was dead, so there was no telling if his little trick several years prior would work again. He was still perplexed by that moment when he had shot the English soldier off his horse with one of his phantom arrows. Perhaps God had had a hand in it.

"You are the Dauphin," said Jeanne, smiling warmly. "I've found you."

"And what will you do now that you have found me?" asked Charles quickly, wary of her. When she made no more moves toward him he waved the daggers off of her.

Jeanne bowed her head toward him and, when she came back up, she looked him in the eye saying, "I have a message for you, Dauphin. A message from God."

Charles VII was a very wary man and he regarded Jeanne with some suspicion. Something inside him told him to listen to her, that she was not as mad as his father had been, and moved swiftly to seize her by her elbow and hurry to a room where they might have a private conversation. "Leave us in peace," he said to the courtiers and guardsmen, "I need to speak with her in private."

Robin, however, was not one who needed to heed such an order so he followed in through the wall. Walking through walls was new to him and he found it rather odd to find himself on one side at first and then on the other side suddenly with little in between to tell him he walked through something. He found Jeanne sitting on the floor on her knees as Charles sat down quickly to listen to her.

"Taking an interest in her, are you?" asked a quiet voice behind Robin. He found himself somewhat taken away from the scene before him as Jeanne spoke to the Dauphin. In fact, as soon as he turned to look behind him, the whole thing disappeared and he was left in the strange halls of a building with brilliant tapestries and clean, stone floors and walls. Catherine stood behind him and regarded him carefully, her hands folded primly in front of her. "You should not interfere, Robert."

"Funny hearing that from you when you're the one who keeps going to tell the girl to do things," said Robin as he leaned against the wall behind him and crossed his arms in front of his chest. "I am simply watching to see what she does. I'm curious, what can I say?"

"A bit more than curiosity burns in that heart of yours, Robin," said Catherine. She shook her head and looked back to Robin with a strange look. "Please do not deter Jeanne from what she must under take. Don't talk to her again until you see her soul inside the gates of Heaven. You will only hurt her in the long run."

"I find it odd that I'm even able to appear down there when I am not reborn in a human body nor am I actually actively watching through the mirror. I just think 'I wonder how that little girl is doing' and suddenly I find myself in her presence. You have any sort of explanation for it, Miss Catherine?" Robin held up the small, circular hand mirror and showed it to her for added effect, but Catherine simply gazed at him hard. "I take that look as you're not going to move from your position of 'stay the hell away from her, you slimy thief'," he said, smirking faintly.

Catherine shook her head and walked away from him. "God only knows. Ask him about that if you want. I can't answer you when I have no answer to give."

Robin snorted and shook his head as he looked to the mirror in his hand. He put it back in his belt pouch after a moment and then walked on, whistling a tune as the stone building around him changed to that of dark woods and mist.


	7. Chapter Six

_A/N: for those who don't know, I typically start out all my chapters with some bit of rambling. It sometimes helps me think to put up a little of what's happening around here before I get into writing a chapter or story or poetry. ^^ It's Christmas Eve and I've got Amanda over. :D We opened one of each other's presents and are saving the rest for tomorrow on Christmas. XD I love making gifts and having them open them up! Amanda gave me a Pirateology book. :3 I'm really liking the name Arabella now. I know Mrs. Figg's name is Arabella Figg, but I never gave much thought to it until I saw in the book that the pirate being chased is named Arabella._

_I gave Amanda a necklace and earring set. :3 She's wearing it right now. ^^ I love Swarovski crystals. They have fire even in dim lighting, which is absolutely perfect. _

_God acts more and more like the tenth Doctor the more often I bring him out. o.O_

_**Chapter Six**_

Robin eyed the waterfall before him. It was peaceful in this place he'd somehow conjured up. He remembered it from when he was much younger and roaming the woods of Sherwood Forest. He also remembered Marian coming along and surprising him with a visit while he was bathing. He grinned faintly to himself as he remembered her surprised look at his nude backside before he managed to take cover in a bush to put on his trousers. They had been so young back then and now, inside, he felt as though he were an old man given a new life to live. Sometimes it was disconcerting to feel like the youth he had been when he first became the leader of the thieves of Sherwood when he knew he was beyond all that now.

He walked and hopped along the boulders surrounding the massive lake the waterfall fell into and found himself reminded of times well spent with the band of thieves he lead. He remembered teaching Will how to steady himself in a fight by balancing on the slick rocks, of showing Much when he was a boy how to fight with a sword while on the rocks so that he would be sure footed when he fought. He remembered the ladies that sometimes came through and bathed in the water while he and his men hid and watched from behind the bushes. It all seemed so distant now.

He sat down and pulled the mirror out of his belt pouch to look at. Lately he had been simply thinking about seeing how Jeanne had been fairing, but he had not even needed to look into the mirror to be where she was. It was as though he was supposed to be there and yet he knew he shouldn't.

Once more he felt the surroundings change and found himself in a far more brightly lit forest, with smaller, slimmer beech trees instead of the tall trees he was accustomed to in Sherwood surrounding him. He touched one of the trees and then looked around him. He couldn't figure out which forest he had found himself inside, for he had never seen such a forest before. He knew beech trees were more common in younger forests, but was perplexed as to why he saw so many beeches surrounding him.

"Catherine has a way with words, doesn't she?"

Robin turned to see God walking closer to him. He had the distinct impression that God was smiling toward him in a friendly fashion, but, once more, as with every other time he gazed upon him, he could not focus on his face or any other discerning feature of him. "You know, your face is getting rather irritating to me," said Robin.

"Oh? And why would that be, Robin?" asked God. He sat down on a large rock and pulled up a knee to rest his arm on as he pulled apart a piece of grass he had plucked. This time he wore white and gold garments with pale brown trousers and brown leather boots. If Robin didn't know any better he would have thought this was some sort of trickster human like himself.

"Your face," said Robin, motioning with a glove clad hand to his own face, "I can't focus on it or anything else defining about you."

"Oh that," said God as though it were a small matter instead of the rather irritating one that Robin felt it was. He seemed to be grinning toward Robin as Robin watched him turn his face way from him. "You see, you humans aren't really meant to see me as I don't actually have a body or a face to be seen with. I'm really more like a consciousness than an actual person, though I can form a body for myself if I wished. This is just for the benefit of talking to you lot with. You sort of supply the appearance for yourselves."

Robin eyed God for a moment and frowned a bit; leaning against one of the beech trees. "And so you keep your face from us who look upon you so we won't argue about what you look like to each other?"

"Yeah, that's one way to think of it," said God. To Robin's mild surprise the head that turned back to look at Robin had become focused, as though he had been that way all along. God's head was not that old in appearance, no more than perhaps forty, with a strong jaw and high cheek bones. His eyes were red, however, like a beast's with slit pupils. They changed to normal human eyes after a moment and turned blue, though. He had a golden goatee, well groomed to a sleek appearance and his hair was long and just as golden, slicked back and smooth like a smoothed lion's mane. He grinned a broadly toward Robin after a moment of Robin staring at him, looking every bit as much a lion as Robin thought of him as appearing.

"You look like a lion," said Robin after a moment.

"Yes, well, I like lions. Big and fuzzy creatures with fluffy manes and all that," said God.

Robin once more wondered if the eccentric person before him was really God or not, though he kept this thought to himself. He looked away and eyed the distance. Ahead of him were more trees like the beech trees; the trees ahead of him were all much younger trees than the ones he was accustomed to or they were the sort of trees that never really grew very tall. Either way, the trees made him feel somewhat closed in by their height.

"What are you planning for Jeanne?" asked Robin.

"That"—God stopped and seemed to be choosing his words carefully—"I have a plan that must be carried out by her and her alone." There was no more merriment to his tone; instead he had a very sober tone to his voice that made Robin rather uneasy to listen to it. "It'll be hard, but I know she will succeed."

"And me," said Robin, "What about my coming over there with just a thought of 'I wonder how the ol' girl is', eh? How is it I am able to appear there and make things happen?"

"You simply can," said God carefully. He smiled faintly and looked sideways toward Robin. "If you had not been there when you were and killed the man coming for her she might have died that very day her village was burned down."

"But then you might have done something to prevent him from advancing further," said Robin, watching him like a hawk.

God stared ahead into the distance as if he were deep in thought. "Perhaps, but I like for you to figure things out for yourselves without my interference. Working together and problem solving are your strong points."

Robin said nothing and looked away from God once more. He fingered the mirror in his hand and traced the leaves of the tree of life on the back of it as he thought to himself about the things that had happened. "I thought there was an order to things, a system to be kept," said Robin, "What happens if I am able to affect things like people by shooting my arrows and killing them? Shouldn't that be impossible since I am dead?"

"You're not really dead. In fact no one here is actually dead. You simply left the human body you were born with and came here," said God softly. "That's a big secret between you and me, however. I don't like that getting around."

"But I am still not in a human body anymore and a ghost to the Earth when I appear. I have no body there," said Robin, getting just a bit irritated. "I have no body and I have no real arrows or a bow. It is simply something I wish to have with me so I have it with me."

"Yes," said God slowly, "But that will, that energy you have, is strong. Most human souls don't have the energy you and a select few have, though only a very, very select few have as much energy as say Cuchulainn."

"Cuchulainn," muttered Robin. "That is the one that you allowed to go to Earth as a spirit, correct?"

God suddenly looked very uncomfortable. "Ghosts have their reasons for being ghosts. Human souls leave the body and come here to my kingdom and go back into human bodies again as they are reborn into them, but they do not simply go back as a ghost. That is what I meant by a system to which I keep things running by. Ghosts on Earth are human souls who feel they have something left on Earth to do in their current state, so they refuse to come up to Heaven until they finish what they set out to do. When they finish what they wanted to finish and have done what they wanted to have done, then they have no more reason to stay and come to this place where they can rest a while and be reborn.

"Cuchulainn, however, is restless in heaven and doesn't want a body again. When that man gets bored he gets into serious trouble and wreaks havoc everywhere in this peaceful place, so I allow him to leave and do as he wishes so long as it keeps him out of my hair. I really don't like having to deal with him."

Robin snorted and hid his smirk behind his scarf. "And just what had that man done to deserve to be seen as a walking disaster to you?"

"He tried to chat up Boudica and then got into a really nasty fight with her when she tried to kill him again for attempting to chat her up. Then, there was the time he got into my mirrors and started playing with them." God rubbed the bridge of his nose and sighed. "He manages to find things to occupy himself that typically always causes some sort of trouble that I have to sort out personally."

"You made him that way, though," said Robin. "You make us all, don't you?"

"Your lineage, your experience and everything else is what makes you who you are, but I have a small hand in matters, yes," said God. "Cuchulainn's a special case, however. He's half god."

"I thought there were no other Gods before you."

"Yes, and that should stay that way. You are to not worship any other gods over me, but that doesn't mean there aren't other gods. In fact, I made them as well, though they keep perfectly to themselves most of the time." God smiled faintly and shook his head. "Either way, that man has himself a powerful lineage and thus his will is far stronger than most others."

"The mirror is helping me, isn't it," said Robin after a moment of silence. He looked to God, though God didn't look to him. His blue eyes stayed trained on the trees in the distance.

"Yes."

Robin nodded and put the mirror away. "Then, I'll keep it safe."

"And stay out of the way of Jeanne," said God, his voice far more serious than Robin had heard it before.

"And why would you tell me something like that?"

God looked to him and those blue eyes became the red devil eyes that he had seen when God's face had changed. "I mean it," said God, "Don't interfere. I don't even want you to watch. You may ask her about it when she appears here, but if you watch…" He went silent and looked away, his eyes becoming blue once more. He looked very sad suddenly. "You won't like what happens, Robin. I will tell you that, but she needs to work this out on her own."

"But she isn't wholly on her own, is she," said Robin, "Catherine and Margaret are always going to see her, to keep her on whatever path you have her on."

"That is because it's the path she has," said God. He stood up suddenly and once more his entire head became unfocused as it had been before. "Good day, Robin d'Loxley," said God, "and heed my order." With that, the scenery changed once more to the waterfalls and Robin was left staring across the water from his perch atop a mossy boulder. After a while, Robin hopped off the boulder and walked away from the waterfall, the entire area changing like the wind were carrying it away and bringing forth the tall trees of Sherwood.

Robin stared at the great tree he enjoyed his nap time in and thought about what God and Catherine had said to him. They both wished him to stay away from Jeanne because whatever Jeanne was supposed to do would be both hard on him as well as her. Clearly that meant that she was going to die a horrible death, an early death, and that she was meant to do this. Robin could handle this, but he was certain Jeanne had not thought about this possibility at all. When you are living you don't think about death until it's on your doorstep and knocking.

* * *

Jeanne was furious. She had been poked and prodded by the Dauphin's best clergymen and an old midwife that checked her virginity, but they still did not believe her. Granted this wasn't the sort of thing that had proof, but did they really expect God or the saints to give her some sort of archaic trinket to show off to them as proof of her truthfulness? Not only that, but they continued to talk down to her as though she were just a little farm girl rather than someone that the Dauphin was sending on a relief mission to win this war for France. It was as though none believed that she could do anything for them. Jeanne was beginning to believe in these doubts the longer it took her to join the forces at Orleans.

And when she had arrived on her horse, her banner waving as she rode up to the men at Orleans, they all regarded her as a joke. Sir Jean de Dunois, the commander at Orleans, had regarded her with suspicion, though he took her in no less within his ranks. Her bodyguard, Jean d'Aulon, had to practically beat his horse on its backside to keep up with her when she rode toward the garrison of men to meet with them. Jeanne had been correct in her assessment of Jean when she had seen him sitting on the throne and pretending he was the Dauphin, albeit poorly. He was a good man, though he clearly tried to hard to do some things to measure up to expectations.

La Hire, Guilles de Rais and the Duke of Alençon were off with Dunois and plotting strategies on how to break through the English barrier; meanwhile Jeanne was forced to sit by and wait for them to actually speak to her. Not that she enjoyed it and she was getting angry enough with them trying to ignore her that she was very close to losing what little patience she had left. It did not surprise her when they came back the very next day after she arrived with fewer men than they had previously because Dunois, Guille, Alençon and La Hire went off to play soldier without even trying to talk to her. It did make her incensed, however, that they allowed such a folly to occur. These men were her fellow countrymen and they were there under God's hand and she was the one who had to take care of them for God.

Aulon stood off behind Jeanne as she glared out the window and prayed silently for someone, anyone, be they God, Robin or Catherine, to give her guidance in this trying time. He shifted uncomfortably as he watched her back, not entirely certain as to how he should talk to her or help her in any form or fashion. He felt positively useless around her and he desperately wanted to be of some form of help for her.

"I need to write a letter," said Jeanne after a moment of absolute silence. "I need someone to write it for me."

"I can write," said Jean d'Aulon with a smile, glad for some sort of activity.

"Then, be certain to address it to the English commander," said Jeanne. She sounded very tense, as though it were giving her great difficulty to say what she was trying to say without losing her temper. Indeed, Aulon could hardly blame her.

"All right," said Aulon and sat down with a piece of parchment and a stylus to do as she bade him do. When she finished dictating it he ran off with it to give to Dunois to send off.

"You must be joking," said Dunois, not the least bit ready to send anything off to Talbot the commander of the English army. "What makes you think they'll even listen to her?"

"It never hurts to try," said Aulon.

Dunois nodded and eyed the parchment before eyeing the door to Jeanne's quarters. He sighed and took the paper away from Aulon and nodded. "I'll send it along," he said softly, "But they won't listen to anything she has to say for the same reason anyone else doesn't. A little farm girl, let alone one with no battle experience whatsoever, is as likely a person to know what matters in warfare as I do about being a cow." Then, he walked off with the rolled up parchment quietly, but neither one realized that someone was listening at the door.


	8. Chapter Seven

_A/N: I seriously need to find a star of David pendent or something._

_Anyway, I stayed up way too late last night to finish writing the last chapter. Hope ya'll enjoyed it. .o I don't really remember much of what I did except for God…. Because God and the Doctor are conspiring against me._

_And yeah, I do take some of my cues from The Messenger, but mostly things like La Hire, Guilles de Rais and the Duke and Aulon as well as the battle field since I'm having difficulty finding a good description of the battles and that was the last Joan of Arc movie I saw. It's a bad movie if you're going for all out accuracy and want Jeanne not to be portrayed as a complete psycho, but it is helpful and I don't doubt that, even as a standard bearer, she was a warrior who fought for her people and likely killed to protect her fellows and herself from being killed. _

_And I don't give a flip that she was black haired and not blonde. It's a popular portrayal of Jeanne to have her with blonde hair and looking quite boyish, so don't be so damned nitpicky. _

_**Chapter Seven**_

Jeanne had heard what Dunois had said to her squire, heard what the English would think of her as the men she was supposed to take care of thought of her, and her final last vestige of patience ran out. She grabbed up the sword that had been given to her and looked at it carefully. There, along the blade, she saw the five fleur-de-lis along the center of the blade nearest to the hilt and remembered the vision that Robin had given her with the mirror. She pulled it out fully and examined it carefully. She hissed as she pulled her finger from the blade and saw the blood beading up through the small cut on her finger that she had accidentally caused with her sword.

She sucked on her finger and looked around for something to clean the wound with before she heard Aulon walk in behind her. "Did you hurt yourself, _Demoiselle_ Jeanne?" he asked; his eyes wide in surprise.

"I need a bandage, Jean," she said quickly, "And to clean my cut. I was inspecting my sword and cut myself on it. The man who made it was very good with his work."

Jean d'Aulon nodded and pulled up some clean cloth and some water before setting her down to deal with her finger. "You will face worse damage in battle should they allow you to join."

"I know what I will face," said Jeanne softly, eyeing her hand as Aulon took care of it, "I also know that the only way these men will listen to me is if I make myself into a man, even if in appearance." For the first time since Jean had been assigned to Jeanne as her squire he realized just how intense a look Jeanne could give him with just a glance of her eyes.

"And how will you do that," asked Aulon, watching her with wide eyes.

"Cut my hair for a start," said Jeanne and held up part of her long blonde hair to him. Then, she pulled out the dagger that Robert d'Baudricourt had given her on the last visit she made to him to petition him to take her to Chinon and cut off the lock, dropping it on the floor. "If they will not listen to a girl, then I will play a boy for them. If they will not listen to a boy I will play a man for them until they realize what it is that I am meant to do here."

Another first came in that moment for Jean d'Aulon: it was the first time that he felt absolute pride in his charge. With that pride swelling in his chest, he took a pair of scissors and clipped her hair until it was as short as a young man's. When it was done he felt as though she had not actually changed, but that he had some how scraped off the pieces that were preventing the real Jeanne from appearing before him.

Aulon picked up the hair that he had clipped off and went off to dispose of it elsewhere, leaving Jeanne to check her armor and her standard. If Dunois was going to ignore her and the English captain Talbot would likely do the same, then she would have to do things her own way to get them done. She would take Orleans from Talbot and she would do it with or without the help of her fellows should they be so foolish as to ignore her.

"It looks good on you," said a soft voice. Jeanne spun around to see Robin sitting on a box not too far from her. Robin sat and let his eyes wander about her body. She blushed faintly and stood up to look at him. "Mind you, I've always fancied women who actually wore dresses and kept their hair long, but I can see a certain appeal to a young woman dressing in those fitted clothes."

"I would appreciate it if you did not speak thusly to me," said Jeanne, feeling suddenly very uncomfortable by the way he looked at her and the way he spoke to her. Something familiar was in the tone of his voice and it bothered her that she couldn't understand why. "These clothes and my hair are necessary to achieve the goal that has been set before me. The men won't listen to me unless I actually show them who I am and who is on their side."

"My brethren have certainly found themselves outmatched, that's for certain," said Robin, though he had spoken under his breath that it took Jeanne a moment to fully catch what he had said. A cold shiver went through her as she realized the full measure of that one statement and turned to look at Robin as fear twitched uncomfortably inside her.

"Sorry, what did you say, _Monsieur_ _Robért_?" she asked, hoping her prompting would prove that she had been wrong. Inside she said a quick prayer that God had not been showing her a spirit of an Englishman alongside that of a saint.

"I said you'll definitely give my countrymen a challenge. I can see it in you, Maid Jeanne." The chill grew worse inside Jeanne and she moved as calmly as she could away from Robin as he stood up and walked a little closer. He smiled at her and those too-green eyes of his sparkled like emeralds at her. "For this, I am proud to have become an acquaintance with you."

In a sweeping move, he took her hand and placed his lips upon her knuckles. She felt cold where he touched her, truly feeling for the first time that he was indeed not human anymore. He she been aright in her assessment that he was sent by the Devil to tempt her away from God's purpose. In a panic she moved sharply away from him and attempted to slap his face away from her. Robin blinked in surprise as her hand went through him and stared at her as she rubbed her hand and glared at him. A look of betrayal was as evident in her eyes as it would have been in a child's that it practically pierced Robin to his heart to see it.

"Ah, so you had no idea that I was English, did you," said Robin, attempting to collect himself once more. He crossed his arms in front of his chest and took a deep breath. "You don't have to be afraid of me, Jeanne, I am a ghost and one that has even saved you at least once."

"Don't talk to me," said Jeanne. "Just… leave me alone. I am asking you now to leave me alone now. I… how can I know that you aren't of Satan, that he didn't send you to me to try to sway me away from God?"

Robin rubbed his face and regarded her for a moment before pulling the mirror out of his belt pouch. "This was given to me by God and God told me to not show it to any human that was living, because they could see their own future inside it. Normal humans aren't meant to see their own futures, but you saw yourself. Did you not see yourself inside this and run away from me in fear because you couldn't understand what you had seen?"

Jeanne kept her distance, but she recognized the mirror that she had seen in his hands as a child. "Then, if you have spoken with God, why can I not speak with him as well?"

It was like thunder crashing overhead, only inside her own skull. One moment she had asked Robin a question and the next she heard a voice inside her head that made her feel as though her head were going to explode.

Robin watched as Jeanne stood as straight as a pole and looked up toward the top of her tent, eyes wide and mouth open, and then heard the voice of God speak rather loudly, "This is why I can't speak to you directly." Then, Jeanne fell. He caught her in his arms and held her as she convulsed violently, her eyes rolled back into her head and her jaws clenched shut. Robin forced open her mouth and stuck his fingers inside her mouth, finding it suddenly strange that he could feel her teeth biting into his gloved fingers and feel her convulsing give way to light twitching until she lay still altogether. Then, he removed his fingers from her mouth and checked her tongue to make sure she had not bitten it by accident and laid her on the ground.

As soon as he had laid her on the ground, he inspected himself. He had become transparent once more, but for that brief moment he had been able to touch her and keep her from harming herself as her body shook from the effect of God's voice. After a while, he heard someone running to the tent and moved away from her, in case it wasn't just her that could see him right then. Aulon jogged into the tent quickly and hefted up Jeanne from the ground, checking her over and stroking her hair from her forehead. "La Pucelle," he asked softly, "What happened?"

Jeanne stirred and opened her eyes slowly. She saw Aulon and then weakly placed a hand to her face. "I think God just answered me."

"What?"

"Nothing. Don't ask, please," said Jeanne quickly. With the help of Aulon, she stood up slowly and got her bearings back.

"I just heard Dunois say they will attack the English fort in the morning," said Aulon.

Jeanne nodded and sat down on the cot that served as her bed. She saw Robin out of the corner of her eye, but ignored him. "Then, we will fight with the men and take back Orleans from the English."

Aulon nodded and looked out of the tent flap. "I'll make certain they don't leave without us this time."

Jeanne smiled faintly and nodded. "Good… if they did leave again without us at their front, then I would have Dunois' hide for myself."

Robin chuckled. "You're getting into the mode of being a soldier yet." Jeanne shot him a glare that looked as though it could have burned him alive. He smirked and took his hat off in a sweeping bow toward her. "Then, I hope to see you fight a good fight, maiden." Then, he disappeared from her view.

Jeanne sat on her bunk and stared at her injured finger, remembering the few times she had seen him and had been somewhat uncomfortable by him, but comforted all the same by him talking to her. God's voice clearly caused her poor body to react violently to it. Did that mean that Robin really was sent by Satan and that he had been around her so long that even a simple sentence such as "This is why I can't talk to you" from God's mouth would cause her body to reject itself? Jeanne didn't know what to believe anymore except what Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret had told her was what she was meant to do. She was meant to lead these men to victory and so she would lead them to victory.

With this burning in her heart, she knew what it was she was supposed to do in that moment. Defeat the English and win back Orleans for the Dauphin. She would prove herself to God and Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret that their faith in her was as founded as her faith in them was. She would ignore Robin if he appeared to her again and be only focused on the task at hand.

* * *

"I told you to not go back," said God softly, "But of course you never did listen well, did you."

"I suppose that is simply who I am," said Robin, sitting down in the oak chair that stood in front of the desk inside God's study. The draperies were of darker tones, possibly to reflect the mood that God was in at that very moment. He had even shed the unfocused persona and taken on the lion like appearance he had seen before.

"I told you that you would regret it," said God, "But not because of me."

Robin's good humor suddenly disappeared. The reaction Jeanne had to him had been of fear and betrayal when he had let slip that he was an English spirit. Perhaps if he had spoken of where he was born then perhaps she wouldn't have distrusted him his slip.

God eyed him a moment before smiling very faintly. "Do me a favor the next time you see her, Robin?"

"Yes?"

"Tell her that the reason I can't speak directly to her is because for most humans my voice hurts their heads to the point of nearly driving them insane or killing them."

Robin raised an eyebrow at God. "And how are you talking to me now, then?"

"Oh, as you are now you are fine, because my voice doesn't have to go through the dimensional barrier to reach your ears, but to someone living on Earth it could kill them or drive them insane from the vibration my voice has coming through the barrier between this world and theirs." Robin stared at God hard as God simply smiled faintly toward him. "Or I could say that my voice will rattle the bones of a living person while you don't actually have a human body anymore to rattle."

"What about the prophets who have spoken with you?" asked Robin, now suddenly very curious.

"Special accommodations," said God quickly, "And the last was my Son, so he already has a bit of me in him already."

"Jesus," supplied Robin.

"Yes, Yeshua," said God, grinning broadly at Robin as he leaned back in his chair like a proud father thinking about his favorite child. "He did what I hoped he would and he lived a good life as a teacher and scholar. I'm also glad that he managed to marry a pretty girl in there as well with all that he was doing."

"Jesus was married?" Robin's eyebrows shot up, but he was hardly surprised. He was simply amused, mostly, by the admission. "And why isn't this in the Holy Book?"

"Because a bunch of men got together and decided what should and shouldn't be in it long ago." God's grin disappeared rather quickly with that admission. "Aside from that, his marital status isn't really an issue. It isn't as important as the message he brought to you now is it?"

"No, I suppose not, but I know of at least a few priests that would argue he was celibate and unmarried," said Robin, smirking a bit behind his scarf.

God snorted and shook his head. "Celibacy. I gave you all a simple directive to go forth, be fruitful and multiply, most importantly within the bonds of marriage, and you lot go about and mess up even that line, corrupting what I told you lot to do and making me out to say something like 'sex is bad! It's evil!' You would think somewhere in there someone would understand that it's committing adultery and being promiscuous that are inherently bad, because bad diseases can come about."

Robin laughed. He laughed like he had not for the longest time as God grinned toward him. "Glad to see that your humor is back to you, Robin," he said, smiling still when Robin finally calmed down.

"Apologies," said Robin, still chuckling, "But I just imagined my poor friend Tuck learning of all of this and what his facial expression would be. Mind you, he would take it in stride after a time, but the initial shock would be impressive!"

God laughed. "Yes, Tuck's shock would be amusing to watch." When they both quieted down, they looked at one another and Robin stood away from his chair to leave. "I won't warn you away from Jeanne any longer, Robin," said God with a gentle voice, "But I do ask that you be careful with her. She is by no means delicate, but the prejudice born of nearly a hundred years of oppression from your own people will still be beneath the calm surface of her emotional waters, if you catch my drift."

"I do and I will." Robin smirked once more and then walked out, tossing the falling part of his scarf back over his shoulder as he walked out the door.


	9. Chapter Eight

_A/N: hello all. :3 My aunt came over and took me Christmas shopping at the local Walmart, so I got a necklace with a cross shaped hole in a rectangle of sterling silver with the word "faith" scrawled beneath it. I also got the Forbidden Kingdom DVD and two CDs. She said "pretend you have fifty dollars, now go spend it." XD unfortunately, I don't tend to buy a lot from Walmart unless I have to, so going forth to spend it all at walmart was a challenge for me. I was so distracted by trying to figure out what I really wanted that I forgot that it was fifty dollars and not thirty. In any case, I was glad to see Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jim and Uncle Dave. They all came to our house to check it out and to see my grandma, who is the sister of both Uncle Jim and Uncle Dave and the sister-in-law to Aunt Joyce through Jim. _

_Oh, and one of my favorite cousins, Dan, had his daughter born not too long ago so Uncle Dave, his dad, brought a picture of the little girl so we could see her. ^^_

**Chapter Eight**

John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, stood and eyed the encampment where the French army waited. He snorted and shook his head, moving away from the window to look over the maps that were given to him. The French were weak willed and could not take much more of the great hammer of England coming down on their heads, but that was where his usual tactic of hitting hard and hitting fast worked to his advantage.

"Captain Talbot! Message!"

Talbot turned to see one of his men running over to him with a rolled up parchment. He handed it off to Talbot and waited for his dismissal as Talbot untied the string holding it and looked through the note. "They request a reply, sir," said the young man.

Talbot snorted and eyed the letter. No doubt this had been dictated, but the woman who had dictated it had signed with her own hand a single name "Jeanne". "It seems the French are desperate if they are allowing a woman in their ranks to dictate letters to me," he said, "Tell them they can go fuck themselves for all I care. We're not surrendering to that weak lot."

The young man grinned and jogged off out of Talbot's sight and Talbot heard the messenger scream out "Fuck off" to the French, not even bothering to waste time on writing a note to them. Talbot liked that about his men. They, too, knew that the French telling them to retreat was absolutely ridiculous and incredibly laughable. They were the English army and the English didn't run.

It was then that something very odd happened. One moment Talbot was looking at the table with the maps on it, the next he saw something move in front of it as though it were a person. "Hello?" He put his hand on his sword at his side in case it really was a person instead of a ghost.

"Ah, so you saw me, did you?" Whoever it was spoke English very well, though Talbot still could not see who it was that was speaking and sneaking around him.

"You be a thief, show yourself and I might think about letting you go with a reward should you do me a little favor," said Talbot. "I could use a thief right now."

The ghost laughed and he saw a chair pull out and heard someone sit in it. As if a breeze blew through in that spot, a figure appeared and solidified somewhat on the chair before him. It was a man dressed in an older style of clothing, the colors faded and dirty as though he hardly ever washed them; the edges worn and places where holes were sewn up could be seen. The ghost before him had a very long, grayish-green scarf that was wound around his neck and obscured part of his face while the broad brimmed had upon his head obscured the rest. He was slightly tanned and had black hair, that much Talbot could tell, but his most defining feature were his green eyes that stood out like bright emeralds in the dark.

"And what task would you need a thief?" asked the man, eyeing Talbot lazily.

"I take it back. You're either a witch or a ghost and I don't believe in witches," said Talbot. "So what brings a ghost to me?"

"A man of rationale I see," said the ghost, smirking faintly behind his scarf. He slipped his bow off his shoulder and perched it on its tip in front of him as though it were some sort of walking stick or cane, resting his hands on the top of it as he gazed at Talbot. "I'm no ordinary ghost, though."

"An archer, I see. English, hmmm? Well, that's at least a consolation. Seen far too many French for my tastes." Talbot snorted and turned around to put the letter over the candle on his desk and lit it on fire. "So what does the ghost of an old English archer need with me and so very far from home? Did you perchance die here?"

"Hardly," said the ghost, "I died back home, deep in the woods, from an illness while on the run from some very nasty people who wanted to use me to demoralize my fellows and the poor people under the nasty fellow's thumb."

Talbot stopped and thought for a moment as he gazed at the burning letter in his hand. That tale sounded oddly familiar, though he couldn't place why. "Interesting tale you have, ghost. Care to give me a name?"

"Names are power, are they not?" said the ghost.

Talbot snorted derisively and shook his head. "So you refuse to give me a name. Care to give me any reason why I shouldn't get my priest up here to banish you then?"

"A priest can't banish what isn't evil," said the ghost quickly, "But you're welcome to try."

Talbot frowned and finally blew out the fire on the letter before it reached his hand and dropped it into a bin to dispose of it later. He turned and eyed the ghost warily, taking a breath to cool his ire. There was no real use in getting angry with a ghost when he couldn't exactly harm him physically. The ghost was clearly someone well known and a cagey character at that. Therefore, the man's name must be incredibly important to know how to handle him correctly.

Talbot made a mental tally of the man's obvious characteristics and began filtering the list down inside his head as he poured himself a cup of wine and sipped it. He had to say one thing about the French in their favor: they were excellent cooks and excellent wine producers. "A ghost of an English archer who clearly hides his appearance out of habit and hides his name because of its fame," said Talbot softly. He smirked at the irony of the answer that popped into his head, that he should have **that person** before him when he **clearly** had originally simply been a myth.

"Robin Hood," said Talbot as he eyed Robin with an eerie smile that made Robin grow cold inside. "My, my, I always did wonder if you were truly real or just a myth. Now I know."

Robin put on a partial smile toward Talbot, though now more wary than he had been previously. "Bravo, you guessed my name aright."

"And what power do I have over a famous ghost?" asked Talbot. He chuckled and shook his head, sitting down at his desk. "If I told my men that I was speaking to Robin Hood they would laugh at me and then the King and his regent would hear of it. I would be deemed unfit for duty."

Robin was reminded of the Sheriff as he watched Talbot sip from his cup. He was cool and accustomed to handling people by just his command and, from what Robin had seen of Orleans and the encampment of men, he was just as brutal as the Sheriff of Nottingham. Robin's face set in a grim glare toward Talbot, the smile lost from his handsome face. "Leave the French alone."

For the first time Talbot looked genuinely surprised by Robin. He choked on his wine and set the cup down as he took out a handkerchief and wiped his mouth and beard. "Are you serious?"

"Very."

Talbot laughed and stuffed his handkerchief away up his sleeve once more before standing up. "And what, pray tell, is a spirit of a myth doing here to tell me to leave the pitiful little French alone? I say that; I should know better than that. You're Robin the Hood, of course. You rob from the rich and give to the poor."

"In a manner of speaking, yes I do," said Robin, "But I also make absolute mischief and grief for men who I really don't like."

Talbot snorted and moved closer to Robin before walking to his door. "I would sooner kiss a hag's ass than retreat. I have a duty to my king and I will uphold that duty." He opened the door and held out a hand toward it. "There is the door, you may leave now. Go back to England; go back to your tales and myths. You do not belong here."

"Neither do you," said Robin softly.

Talbot regarded Robin for a moment. "If I don't leave, then what will you do? Haunt me? Please, I have other things far scarier than you back home and they happen to be the king's regent and my wife."

"I don't have to do anything, actually," said Robin, lazily lying back in his chair and pulling his hat down as though he were going to snooze right there. "There is among the French camp a woman who will make minced meat out of you and yours."

"No woman will ever beat me," snapped Talbot, "Let alone a French harpy."

"Oh, I wouldn't wager too much on that bet, Captain Talbot," said Robin. He chuckled and settled into his chair, getting ready for a nice nap. "I have it on good authority that you are making the single greatest mistake in your life."

"Get out." Talbot had had enough of the old thief. "Get out or I really will bring the priest up here to get rid of you."

"As I said, you can't get rid of me with a priest. A priest can only banish evil and I am hardly evil." Robin chuckled a little more and then yawned loudly, stretching his arms over his head before settling into the chair once more. "If you don't mind too terribly, Captain Talbot, I think I'll stay right here and wait for a while so I can watch you fail very hard."

Furious, Talbot threw a discarded elbow guard at Robin's head, but it simply went through. Defeated for the moment, Talbot decided ignoring the lout was the best action to take and proceeded to do just that; however Robin seemed to become increasingly transparent as the day wore on into night until he finally disappeared. When Talbot decided the ghost had finally left, he went to bed to get some rest. The French, for all their foolishness, were at least a tenacious lot and didn't wholly give up trying to find a way into the English's happy little fort set up at the gate to Orleans.

* * *

Jeanne woke up to the feeling of something terribly wrong about her. She blinked and looked around her, though she saw nothing out of the ordinary before her. The tents were empty outside save for hers and the horses were gone, when she stepped outside. They had left without her again!

Jeanne ran back into her tent and slapped Aulon's shoulder hard to wake him up before hauling on her chainmail and armor as quickly as she could. "Wake up, Jean!" she cried. "They left without us again! If the English haven't killed Dunois already, I'll skin him myself!"

Jean d'Aulon shot up out of his bed and hurriedly helped Jeanne dress herself in her armor before pulling on his and getting the horses for the both of them. However, Jeanne beat him to the horse as she picked up her standard and pulled herself up onto the saddle and rode off without a second word. Aulon followed as close as he could to Jeanne as they made their way to the battle ground of Orleans. There, what greeted their eyes could be described in no other terms except absolute chaos. Men were ripping each other apart, English archers were shooting from the ramparts and Dunois was in the middle of it screaming at the top of his lungs, "RETREAT!"

The men scattered like children, running as fast as they could away from the English fort. Jeanne could see them growing larger in her vision as she made her way right into the middle of them all. Dunois waved to her to make her stop, but she continued past him at top speed toward the fort. Dunois screamed at her back, "You're going to get yourself killed, you crazy woman!!"

The men watched as she rode full tilt at the gate and went into the ditch in front of it, underneath the spikes that had been erected outside of it. She rode around trying to find a way in while men shouted at her and tried to shoot her with arrows. It was as though none of them could touch her and with the French army coming up behind her the English quickly began trying to get their men back together and scramble to annihilate the French.

Jeanne gave a shout of triumph as she found an opening and cut the bonds holding portion of gate upright. It fell to her and she used it to ride up into the fort and through the crowd of men coming at her. She quickly knocked them away from her using the pole of her standard and went to the drawbridge. She kicked the release on the drawbridge as hard as she could manage and was pleasantly surprised when the drawbridge fell before her. There, she rode out and quickly waved her standard to the French army. "Come with me and fight," she cried, "Fight for your country! Fight for GOD!"

The men of the French army saw their little _La Pucelle_ waving her flag in front of an open gate to the fortress at Orleans and charged with all the might they could muster. The English, for once, looked genuinely frightened by the French as they watched them coming at them. Chaos reigned once more, but this time, in the sea of men, there rode a woman dressed as a man with her flag held proudly amongst them. For the first time in a long while, the French men were winning. They were taking Orleans back and taking back one more piece of their home away from the English. It was enough to give any French man a sense of pride and it was because this crazy, strange woman who was so determined to join the fight had made herself an entrance and forced an exit from the small fort.

The fight lasted only a little while, but Jeanne had managed to protect a few of her men with her standard pole and her sword. When it was over, she and the rest went into Orleans and found the rest of the populace inside the walls of Orleans running up to her and the men as they entered. It was strange to have so many people staring at her as though she were some sort of odd specimen. She covered her head with her helm quickly and tried to not take notice as they began whispering to each other and the men around her join in with the whispering.

A voice pulled her away from all of it, however, as she felt a body sit behind her in her saddle; a male body and the distinct smell of an old forest overwhelming her. She blinked and refused to turn around as she heard him speak, "You did well, Maid Jeanne."

"Why are you here?" she demanded softly. "We just dispatched a few of your countrymen. Why won't you follow them?"

"Be careful you don't speak too loudly, Maid Jeanne," said Robin softly in her ear. It sent a strange shiver through her. "Or else they'll think you truly are insane and no one wants that to happen. I only appeared to congratulate you. You did well in persevering where these men would not dare."

"I only did what I thought was right," said Jeanne softly. She turned slightly to look at him before her cheeks flushed faintly and she looked ahead. "Nothing more, nothing less. I got my men inside and that is all that matters."

"Your men?" asked Robin, smirking faintly behind his scarf. He leaned closer to her ear and she really did shiver from the sound of his voice this time. "Already you think of them as your men. You've got a true leader buried beneath that cute, innocent farmgirl persona, Jeanne. I like that." Then, he kissed her ear and she felt him no more.

"Something the matter, _La Pucelle_?" asked Aulon as he came up next to her.

"No," snapped Jeanne before she hurried along to be beside Dunois, leaving poor Aulon confused as to what had occurred.


End file.
